





















































































From the heart of the jungle sounded the deep, coughing 
roar of a jaguar 






/ 

THE 

INCA EMERALD 


BY 

SAMUEL gCOVILLE, Jr. * 

Author of “Boy Scouts in the Wilderness," “The 
Blue Pearl,” etc. 


/ 

ILLUSTRATED BY 


CHARLES LIVINGSTON BULL 



NEW YORK 
THE CENTURY CO. 
1922 

r> 








Copyright, 1922, 

by 

The Century Co. 
Copyright, 1922, 

by ^ 

Samuel Scoville, Jr. 


<//■ 7 ^ 

PRINTED IN U. 8. A. 


OCT 23 ’22 



©C1A686461 , 




To 

ALICE TRUMBULL SCOVILLE 
My Kindest Critic 









CONTENTS 


chapter page 

I The Beginning.3 

II A New World.29 

III The Vampires.52 

IV Death River .74 

V Shipwreck .99 

VI The Black Tiger.126 

VII The Yellow Snake.153 

VIII The Man-Eaters. 177 

IX The Pit.203 

X Sky Bridge .227 

XI The Lost City.250 

XII El Dorado .275 
















. 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

From the heart of the jungle sounded the deep, 

coughing roar of a jaguar .... Frontispiece 

PAGING PAGE 

“The bushmaster is the largest, rarest, and deadliest 

of South American serpents”.6 

It showed itself as the great condor of the Andes, the 

second largest bird that flies.242 

Hideous heads suddenly showed over the edge of 

the wall. 264 


















THE INCA EMERALD 






I 


fHE INCA EMERALD 


CHAPTER I 
THE BEGINNING 

I T wa9 a bushmaster which started the 
Quest of the Emerald—and only a pos¬ 
sible bushmaster at that. One May eve¬ 
ning in Cornwall, Big Jim Donegan, the lum¬ 
ber-king; sat in the misty moon-light with his 
slippered feet on the rail of the veranda of 
the great house in which he lived alone. He 
was puffing away at a corn-cob pipe as 
placidly as if he did not have more millions 
than Cornwall has hills—which is saying 
something, for Cornwall has twenty-seven 
of the latter. Along the gravel walk, which 
wound its way for nearly half a mile to the 
entrance of the estate, came the sound of 

3 


4 


THE INCA EMERALD 


a dragging footstep. A moment later, from 
out of the shadows stepped a man over six 
feet in height, a little stooped, and who wore 
a shiny frock-coat surmounted by a somewhat 
battered silk hat. The stranger had a long, 
clean-shaven, lantern-jawed face. His nose 
jutted out like a huge beak, a magnificent, 
domineering nose, which, however, did not 
seem in accord with his abstracted blue eyes 
and his precise voice. 

“What do you want?” snapped Big Jim, 
bringing his feet to the floor with alarming 
suddenness. 

The stranger blinked at him mildly for a 
moment with a gaze that seemed to be cata¬ 
loguing the speaker. 

“This is Mr. James Donegan,” he finally 
stated. 

“How do you know?” demanded the lum¬ 
ber-king. 

“You have all the characteristics of a mag¬ 
nate,” returned the other, calmly, “energy, 
confidence, bad temper, worse manners, 
and—” 


THE BEGINNING 


5 

“Whoa!” shouted Big Jim, whose bark 
was worse than his bite and who always 
respected people who stood up to him. 
“Never mind any more statistics. Who are 
you!” 

“My name is Ditson,” responded the other, 
sitting down without invitation in the most 
comfortable chair in sight. “Professor Aman- 
dus Ditson. I am connected with the Smith¬ 
sonian National Museum.” 

“Well,” returned Mr. Donegan, stiffen¬ 
ing, “I don’t intend to subscribe any money 
to the Smithsonian Museum or any other 
museum, so there’s no use of your asking 
me.” 

“I had no intention of asking you for 
anything,” returned Professor Ditson, se¬ 
verely. “I had understood that you were a 
collector of gems, and I came to place at your 
disposal certain information in regard to 
the finest emeralds probably now in existence. 
I too am a collector,” he went on abstract¬ 
edly. 

“Humph!” grunted Big Jim. “What do 


6 


THE INCA EMERALD 


you collect?” he inquired, regarding his visi¬ 
tor shrewdly. 

“Bushmasters,” responded Professor Ditson, 
simply. 

“Come again,” returned Big Jim, much 
puzzled, “I don’t quite get you. What are 
bushmasters?” 

“The bushmaster,” announced Professor 
Ditson, with more animation than he had 
yet shown, “is the largest, the rarest and 
the deadliest of South American serpents. 
It attains a length of over twelve feet and 
has fangs an inch and a half long. You will 
hardly believe me,” he went on, tapping Mr. 
Donegan’s knee with a long, bony forefinger, 
“but there is not a single living specimen in 
captivity at present, even in our largest 
cities.” 

The lumber-king regarded the scientist with 
undisguised astonishment. 

“Professor Amandus Ditson,” he announced 
solemnly, “so far as I’m concerned, there can 
continue to be a lack of bushmasters not only 
in our great cities, but everywhere else. 



The bushmaster is the largest, rarest, and deadliest of 
South American serpents” 









THE BEGINNING 


7 

Snakes of any kind are absolutely nothing in 
my young life.” 

“Tut! tut!” responded the professor, reprov¬ 
ingly. “I think that I could convince you 
that you are wrong in your unfortunate aver¬ 
sion to reptiles.” 

“No you could n’t,” returned Big Jim, pos¬ 
itively, “not if you were to lecture all the rest 
of the year.” 

“Well,” responded Professor Ditson sooth¬ 
ingly, “suppose we discuss your hobby, which 
I understand is precious stones.” 

“Now you ’re talking,” returned the 
other, enthusiastically, “I suppose I’ve 
about the finest collection of gems in this 
country, and in some lines perhaps the best 
on earth, Take pearls, for instance,” he 
boasted. “Why, Professor Ditson, some boys 
right here in Cornwall helped me get the fin¬ 
est examples of pink and blue pearls that there 
are in any collection. When it comes to em¬ 
eralds, there are half a dozen collectors who 
beat me out. What’s all this dope you have 
about them, anyway?” 


8 


THE INCA EMERALD 


“Last year,” replied the other, “I was in 
Peru at a time when they were repairing one 
of the oldest cathedrals in that country. A 
native workman, knowing that I was interested 
in rarities of all kinds, brought me an old 
manuscript, which turned out to be a map and 
a description of the celebrated Lake of El¬ 
dorado.” 

“That’s the name of one of those dream 
places,” interrupted Mr. Donegan, impa¬ 
tiently. “I’ve no time to listen to dreams.” 

Professor Ditson was much incensed. 

“Sir,” he returned austerely, “I deal in facts, 
not in dreams. I have traveled one thousand 
miles to see you, but if you can not speak more 
civilly, I shall be compelled to terminate this 
interview and go to some one with better man¬ 
ners and more sense.” 

“Just what I was going to suggest,” mur¬ 
mured Big Jim, taken aback, but much pleased 
by the professor’s independence. “So long, 
however, as you’ve beat me to it, go on. I ’ll 
hear you out anyway.” 

Professor Ditson stared at him sternly. 


THE BEGINNING 


9 


“For nearly four hundred years,’’ he began 
at last, “there have been legends of a sacred 
lake somewhere in Bolivia or Peru. Once a 
year, before the Spanish conquest, the chief of 
the Incas, the dominant race of Peru, covered 
with gold-dust, would be ferried out to the 
center of this lake. There he would throw 
into the lake the best emerald that had been 
found in their mines during the year and then 
leap in himself. At the same time the other 
members of the tribe would stand on the 
shores with their backs to the lake and throw 
into the water over their shoulders emeralds 
ind gold ornaments.” 

“Why on earth did they do that?” ex¬ 
claimed the old collector. 

“As an offering to the Spirit of the Lake,” 
returned the professor. “The Spaniards, 
when they heard the story, named the lake, 
Eldorado—The Lake of the Golden Man. 
As the centuries went by, the location was 
lost—until I found it again.” 

There was a long pause, which was broken 
at last by the lumber-king. 


IO 


THE INCA EMERALD 


“Have you any proof that this story of 
yours is true?” he inquired sarcastically. 

For answer, the scientist fished a dingy bag 
from his pocket and shook out on the table a 
circlet of soft, pale gold in which gleamed 
three green stones. 

“I found this ten feet from the shore,” he 
said simply. 

The lumber-king gasped as he studied the 
stones with an expert eye. 

“Professor Ditson,” he admitted at last, 
“you ’re all right and I’m all wrong. That’s 
South American gold. I know it by the color. 
African gold is the deepest, and South Amer¬ 
ican the palest. Those stones are emeralds,” 
he went on; “flawed ones, to be sure, but of 
the right color. The common emerald from 
the Ural Mountains is grass-green,” lectured 
Mr. Donegan, fairly started on his hobby. 
“A few emeralds are gray-green. Those come 
from the old mines of the Pharaohs along the 
coast of the Red Sea. They are found on 
mummies and in the ruins of Pompeii and 
along the beach in front of Alexandria, where 
treasure-ships have been wrecked.” 


THE BEGINNING 


ii 


Professor Ditson yawned rudely. 

“Once in a blue moon,” went on the old 
collector, earnestly, “a real spring-green emer¬ 
ald with a velvety luster, like these stones, 
turns up. We call ’em ‘treasure emeralds,’ ” 
he continued, while Professor Ditson shifted 
uneasily in his chair. Most of them are in 
Spanish collections, and they are supposed to 
be part of the loot that Cortez and Pizarro 
brought back to Spain when they conquered 
Mexico and Peru. How large did these old 
Peruvian emeralds run?” he inquired sud¬ 
denly. 

He had to repeat this question before Pro¬ 
fessor Ditson, who had been dozing lightly, 
roused himself. 

“Ah yes, quite so, very interesting, I’m 
sure,” responded that scientist, confusedly. 
“As to the size of South American emeralds,” 
he went on, rubbing his eyes, “the Spanish 
record shows that Pizarro sent back to Spain 
several which were as large as pigeon eggs, 
and there is a native tradition that the last Inca 
threw into Eldorado an oval emerald as large 
as a hen’s egg.” 


12 


THE INCA EMERALD 


Donegan’s face flushed with excitement. 

“Professor Ditson,” he said at last, “I’ve 
got to have one of those emeralds. Come in,” 
he went on, getting up suddenly, “and I ’ll 
show you my collection.” 

Professor Ditson sat still. 

“No, Mr. Donegan,” he said, “it would be 
just a waste of time. To me, gems are just a 
lot of colored crystals.” 

The old lumber-king snorted. 

“I suppose you prefer snakes,” he said cut¬ 
tingly. 

Professor Ditson’s face brightened at the 
word. 

“There,” he said enthusiastically, “Is some¬ 
thing worth while. I only wish that I had you 
in my snake-room. I could show you live, un¬ 
caged specimens which would interest you 
deeply.” 

“They sure would,” returned Mr. Donegan, 
shivering slightly. “Well,” he went on, “every 
man to his own taste. What’s your idea about 
this emerald secret? Can we do business to¬ 
gether?” 


THE BEGINNING 


i3 

The professor’s face assumed an air of what 
he fondly believed to be great astuteness. 

“I would suggest,” he said, “that you fit out 
an expedition to the Amazon basin under my 
direction, to remain there until I collect one 
or more perfect specimens of the bushmaster. 
Then I will guide the party to Eldorado and 
assist them, as far as I can, to recover the 
sunken treasure.” 

He came to a full stop. 

“Well,” queried the lumber-king, “what 
else?” 

The professor looked at him in surprise. “I 
have nothing else to suggest,” he said. 

“Suppose we get emeralds which may be 
worth hundreds of thousands of dollars—what 
percentage will you claim?” persisted Mr. 
Donegan. 

“I thought that I had made it plain,” re¬ 
turned the professor, impatiently, “that I have 
no interest whatever in emeralds. If you will 
pay the expenses of the expedition and allow 
me to keep as my own property any specimens 
of bushmasters obtained, it will be entirely sat- 


THE INCA EMERALD 


H 

isfactory to me. Of course,” finished the sci¬ 
entist, generously, “if we catch several bush- 
masters, I should have no objections to your 
having one.” 

“Heaven forbid!” returned the lumber- 
king. “Professor,” he went on with great em¬ 
phasis, “I am perfectly willing that you shall 
have absolutely for your own use and benefit 
any and all bushmasters, crocodiles, snakes, 
toads, tarantulas, and any other similar bric- 
a-brac which you may find in South America. 
Moreover,” he continued, “I ’ll fit out an ex¬ 
pedition right here from Cornwall that will do 
the business for both of us. There’s a good- 
for-nothin’ old chap in this town named Jud 
Adams who has been all over the North 
huntin’ an’ trappin’ an’ prospectin’. In his 
younger days he was a pearl-diver. Then 
there ’re two young fellows here that went off 
last year with him for me and brought 
back the finest blue pearl in the world. I ain’t 
got no manner of doubt but what all three of 
’em will jump at the chance to go after emer¬ 
alds and bushmasters.” 


THE BEGINNING 


IS 

“Bushmasters and emeralds, please,” cor¬ 
rected the professor. 

“Just as you say,” responded the lumber- 
king. “Now you come right in and I ’ll 
put you up for the night and we ’ll send 
over at once for the crowd that I have in 
mind and get this expedition started right 
away.” 

“The sooner the better,” responded the pro¬ 
fessor, heartily. “Any day, some collector 
may bring back a bushmaster and beat me out 
;with the Smithsonian.” 

“I feel the same way,” agreed the lumber- 
king. “I want Jim Donegan to have the first 
crack at those Inca emeralds.” 

While all this talk about gold and emeralds 
and bushmasters was going on in Big Jim’s 
big house, over in a little house on the tiptop 
of Yelpin Hill, Jud Adams, the old trapper, 
was just sitting down to supper with two of 
his best friends. One of these was Will 
Bright, a magnificently built boy of eighteen 
with copper-colored hair and dark blue eyes, 


16 THE INCA EMERALD 

and the other his chum, Joe Couteau, silent, 
lithe, and swart as his Indian ancestors. 
Jud himself was not much over five feet 
tall, with bushy gray hair and beard and 
steel-sharp eyes. These three, with Fred Per¬ 
kins, the runner, had won their way to Goreloi, 
the Island of the Bear, and brought back Jim 
Donegan’s most prized gem, as already chron¬ 
icled in “The Blue Pearl.” They had learned 
to care for one another as only those can who 
have fought together against monsters of the 
sea, savage beasts, and more savage men. Joe 
and Will, moreover, had shared other life-and- 
death adventures together, as told in “Boy 
Scouts in the Wilderness,” and, starting with¬ 
out clothes, food, or fire, had lived a month in 
the heart of the woods, discovered the secret of 
Wizard Pond, and broken up Scar Dawson’s 
gang of outlaws. Will never forgot that Joe 
had saved him from the carcajou, nor Joe that 
it was Will who gave him the first chance of 
safety when the bloodhounds were hot on their 
leels through the hidden passage from Wizard 
Pond. Each one of the four, as his share of 


THE BEGINNING 


i7 


the blue pearl, and the sea-otter pelt brought 
back from Akotan, had received fifteen thou¬ 
sand dollars. Fred had invested his money in 
his brother’s business in Boston, left Corn¬ 
wall, and bade fair to settle down into a suc¬ 
cessful business man. Will and Joe had both 
set aside from their share enough to take them 
through Yale. As for Jud, the day after he 
received his winnings in the game which the 
four had played against danger and death, he 
had a short interview with his old friend Mr. 
Donegan. 

“All my life long,” began Jud, “I Ve been 
makin’ money; but so far, I haven’t got a 
cent saved up. I know how to tame ’most any 
other kind of wild animal, but money allers 
gets away from me. They do say, Jim,” went 
on the old man, “that you’ve got the knack of 
keepin’ it. Probably you would n’t be worth 
your salt out in the woods, but every man’s 
got somethin’ that he can do better ’n most. 
So you just take my share of the blue-pearl 
money an’ put it into somethin’ safe an’ sound 
that’ll bring me an income. You see, Jim,” 


i8 


THE INCA EMERALD 


he went on confidentially, “I ain’t so young as 
I used to be.” 

“I should say you ain’t!” exclaimed 
Big Jim, knowing how Jud hated to be 
called old. “You’re ’most a hundred 
now.” 

“I ain’t! I ain’t!” howled Jud, indig¬ 
nantly. “I ain’t a day over fifty—or there¬ 
abouts.” 

“Well, well,” said his friend, soothingly, 
“we won’t quarrel over it. I ’ll take care of 
your money and see that you get all that’s 
cornin’ to you for the two or three years which 
you’ve got left”; and with mutual abuse and 
affection the two parted as good friends as 
ever. 

To-night the old trapper and his guests 
had just finished supper when the telephone 
rang. 

“Jud,” came Mr. Donegan’s voice over the 
wire, “what would you and Bill and Joe think 
of another expedition—after emeralds this 
time?” 

“We’d think well of it,” returned Jud, 


THE BEGINNING 


19 

promptly. “The kids are here at my house 
now.” 

“Good work!” exclaimed the lumber-king. 
“All three of you come right over. I ’ve got 
a scientist here who’s going to guide you to 
where the emeralds grow.” 

“You got a what?” queried Jud. 

“A scientist!” shouted Big Jim, “a perfes- 
ser. One of those fellows who know all about 
everything except what’s useful.” 

“We’ll be right over,” said Jud, hanging 
up the receiver and breaking the news to his 
friends. 

“Listens good,” said Will, while Joe grunted 
approvingly. 

“It’s a pity old Jim ain’t young and sup¬ 
ple enough to go on these trips with us him¬ 
self,” remarked Jud, complacently. 

“He ten years younger than you,” suggested 
Joe, slyly, who always delighted in teasing 
the old trapper about his age. 

“Where do you get such stuff?” returned 
Jud, indignantly. “Jim Donegan’s old 
enough to be my father—or my brother, any- 


20 


THE INCA EMERALD 


way,” he finished, staring sternly at his grin¬ 
ning guests. 

“You ’re quite right, Jud,” said Will, sooth¬ 
ingly. “Let’s go, though, before that scien¬ 
tist chap gets away.” 

“He no get away,” remarked Joe, sorrow¬ 
fully, who had listened to the telephone con¬ 
versation. “He go with us.” 

“I don’t think much of that,” said Jud, 
wagging his head solemnly. “The last per- 
fesser I traveled with was while I was pros¬ 
pectin’ down in Arizona. He sold a cure 
for snakebites an’ small-pox, an’ one night 
he lit out with all our cash an’ we never did 
catch him.” 

Half an hour later found the whole party 
in Mr. Donegan’s study, where they were in¬ 
troduced to Professor Ditson. 

“What might you be a perfesser of?” in¬ 
quired Jud, staring at him with unconcealed 
hostility. 

The other stared back at him for a moment 
before he replied. 

“I have specialized,” he said at last, 
“in reptiles, mammals, and birds, be- 


THE BEGINNING 


21 


sides some research work in botany.” 

“Did n’t leave out much, did you?” sneered 
Jud. 

“Also,” went on the professor, more 
quietly, “I learned early in life something 
about politeness. You would find it an 
interesting study,” he went on, turning away. 

“Now, now,” broke in Mr. Donegan, as Jud 
swallowed hard, “if you fellows are going 
treasure-hunting together, you must n’t begin 
by scrappin’.” 

“I, sir,” returned Professor Ditson, aus¬ 
terely, “have no intention of engaging in an 
altercation with any one. In the course of 
collecting-trips in the unsettled portions of all 
four continents, I have learned to live on good 
terms with vagabonds of all kinds, and I can 
do it again if necessary.” 

“Exactly!” broke in Mr. Donegan, hur¬ 
riedly, before Jud could speak; “that cer¬ 
tainly shows a friendly spirit, and I am sure 
Jud feels the same way.” 

“I do,” returned the latter, puffingly, “just 
the same way. I got along once with a per- 


22 


THE INCA EMERALD 


fesser who was no darn good, and I guess I 
can again.” 

“Then,” said Mr. Donegan, briskly, “let’s 
get down to business. Professor Ditson, show 
us, please, the map and manuscript with which 
you located Lake Eldorado.” 

For reply, the gaunt scientist produced from 
a pocket a small copper cylinder, from which 
he drew a roll of yellowed parchment. Half 
of it was covered with crabbed writing in the 
imperishable sepia ink which the old scriv¬ 
eners used. The other half was apparently 
blank. The lumber-king screwed his face up 
wisely over the writing. 

“H’m-m,” he remarked at last. “It’s some 
foreign language. Let one of these young 
fellers who ’re going to college try.” 

Will took one look at the paper. 

“I pass,” he said simply; while Joe shook 
his head without even looking. 

“You ’re a fine lot of scholars!” scoffed Jud, 
as he received the scroll. “Listen now to 
Perfesser Adams of the University of Out- 
of-Doors.” 


THE BEGINNING 


23 

Then, to the astonishment of everybody, in 
his high-pitched voice he began to translate 
the labored lines, reading haltingly, like a 
school-boy: 

“I, Alvarado, companion of Pizarro, about to 
die at dawn, to my dear wife Oriana. I do re¬ 
pent me of my many sins. I am he who slew 
the Inca Atahualpa and many of his people, and 
who played away the Sun before sunrise. Now 
it comes that I too must die, nor of the wealth that 
I have won have I aught save the Secret of El¬ 
dorado. On a night of the full moon, I myself 
saw the Golden Man throw into the lake the great 
Emerald of the Incas and a wealth of gold and 
gems. This treasure-lake lies not far from Orcos 
in which was thrown the Chain. I have drawn a 
map in the way thou didst show me long years 
ago. Take it to the king. There be treasure 
enough there for all Spain; and through his jus¬ 
tice, thou and our children shall have a share. 
Forgive me, Oriana, and forget me not. 

“Alvarado” 


There was a silence when he had finished. 


THE INCA EMERALD 


24 

It was as if the shadow of the tragedy of that 
wasted life and vain repentance had drifted 
down the centuries and hung over the little 
company who had listened to the reading of 
the undelivered letter. The stillness was 
broken by Mr. Donegan. 

“Where did you learn to read Spanish, you 
old rascal?” he inquired of Jud. 

“Down among the Greasers in Mexico,” 
chuckled the latter, delightedly. 

“What does he mean by ‘playing away the 
Sun’ and the ‘Chain’?” asked Will, of the sci¬ 
entist. 

“When the treasures of the Incas were di¬ 
vided,” explained Professor Ditson, precisely, 
“Alvarado had for his share a golden image of 
the sun over ten feet in diameter. This he 
gambled away in a single night. The Chain,” 
continued Professor Ditson, “surrounded the 
chief Inca’s residence. It was made of gold, 
and was two hundred and thirty-three yards 
long. It was being carried by two hundred 
Indians to Cuzco to form part of the chief’s 
ransom—a room filled with gold as high as 


THE BEGINNING 


25 

he could reach. When the gold came to his 
shoulder, he was killed. At the news of his 
death, the men who were bringing the Chain 
threw it into Lake Orcos.” 

“But—but,” broke in the lumber-king, 
“where is the map? If you’ve got it with 
you, let’s have a look at it.” 

Without speaking, Professor Ditson reached 
over and took the match from the table. 
Lighting it, he held the flame for an in¬ 
stant close to the parchment. On the smooth 
surface before their eyes, suddenly appeared 
a series of vivid green lines, which at last 
took the form of a rude map. 

“What he learned from Oriana,” explained 
Profesor Ditson, “was how to make and use 
invisible ink.” 

“Fellows,” broke in Mr. Donegan, ear¬ 
nestly, “I believe that Professor Ditson has 
found Eldorado, and I’m willing to go the 
limit to get one of the emeralds of the Incas. 
I ’ll finance the expedition if you ’ll all go. 
What do you say?” 

“Aye,” voted Will. 


26 


THE INCA EMERALD 


“Aye,” grunted Joe. 

“I assent,” said Professor Ditson, with his 
usual preciseness. 

Jud alone said nothing. 

“How about it, Jud?” inquired Big Jim. 

“Well,” returned Jud, doubtfully, “who’s 
goin’ to lead this expedition?” 

“Why, the professor here,” returned the 
lumber-king, surprised. “He’s the only one 
who knows the way.” 

“That’s it,” objected Jud. “It’s likely to 
be a rough trip, an’ treasure-huntin’ is always 
dangerous. Has the perfesser enough pep 
to keep up with us younger men?” 

Professor Diston smiled bleakly. 

“I’ve been six times across South America, 
and once lived among the South American 
Indians for two years without seeing a white 
man,” he remarked acidly. “Perhaps I can 
manage to keep up with an old man and two 
boys who have never been in the country be¬ 
fore. You should understand,” he went on, 
regarding the old trapper sternly, “that spe¬ 
cialization in scientific investigation does not 


THE BEGINNING 


27 

necessarily connote lack of physical ability.” 

Jud gasped. “I don’t know what he means,” 
he returned angrily, “but he’s wrong—spe¬ 
cially that part about me bein’ old.” 

“I feel it is my duty to warn you,” interrup¬ 
ted Professor Ditson, “that this trip may in¬ 
volve a special danger outside of those usual 
to the tropics. When I was last in Peru,” he 
went on, “I had in my employ a man named 
Slaughter. He was an expert woodsman, but 
sinister in character and appearance and with 
great influence over the worst element among 
the Indians. One night I found him read¬ 
ing this manuscript, which he had taken from 
my tent while I was asleep. I persuaded him 
to give it up and leave my employ.” 

“How did you persuade him?” queried Jud, 
curiously. 

“Automatically,” responded Professor Dit¬ 
son. “At least, I used a Colt’s automatic,” 
he explained. “His language, as he left, was 
deplorable,” continued the scientist, “and he 
declared, among other things, that I would 
have him to reckon with if I ever went again 


28 


THE INCA EMERALD 


to Eldorado. I have no doubt that through 
his Indian allies he will be advised of the ex¬ 
pedition when it reaches Peru and make 
trouble for us.” 

“What did he look like?” inquired Mr. 
Donegan. 

“He was a giant,” replied Professor Ditson, 
“and must have been over seven feet in 
height. His eyebrows made a straight line 
across his forehead, and he had a scar from 
his right eye to the corner of his jaw.” 

“Scar Dawson!” shouted Will. 

“You don’t mean the one who nearly burned 
you and Joe alive in the cabin?” said the 
lumber-king, incredulously. 

“It must be,” said Will. “No other man 
would have that scar and height. “I ’ll say 
‘some danger’ is right,” he concluded, while 
Joe nodded his head somberly. 

“That settles it!” said Jud. “It’s evident 
this expedition needs a good man to keep these 
kids out of trouble. I’m on.” 


CHAPTER II 


A NEW WORLD 

A WEEK later found the whole party 
aboard of one of the great South 
American liners bound for Belem. 
The voyage across was uneventful except for 
the constant bickerings between Jud and Pro¬ 
fessor Ditson, in which Will and Joe acted 
sometimes as peace-makers and sometimes as 
pace-makers. Then, one morning, Will woke 
up to find that the ocean had changed over¬ 
night from a warm sap-green to a muddy clay- 
color. Although they were not within sight 
of land, the vast river had swept enough earth 
from the southern continent into the ocean 
to change the color of the water for a hundred 
miles out at sea. Just at sunrise the next day 
the steamer glided up the Amazon on its way 
to the old city of Belem, seventy miles inland. 
“The air smells like a hot, mouldy cellar 1 ” 

29 


30 


THE INCA EMERALD 


grumbled Jud; and soon the Cornwall pil¬ 
grims began to glimpse things strange and 
new to all three of them. Groups of slim 
assai-palms showed their feathery foliage; 
slender lianas hung like green snakes from the 
trees; and everywhere were pineapple plants, 
bread-fruit trees, mangos, blossoming oranges 
and lemons, rows of enormous silk-cotton trees, 
and superb banana plants, with glossy, velvety 
green leaves twelve feet in length curving over 
the roof of nearly every house. Beyond the 
city the boys had a sight of the jungle, which 
almost without a break covers the greater part 
of the Amazon basin, the largest river-basin 
on earth. They landed just before sunset, 
and, under Professor Ditson’s direction, a 
retinue of porters carried their luggage to the 
professor’s house, far down the beach, the 
starting-point for many of his •South Ameri¬ 
can expeditions. 

As the sun set, the sudden dark of the 
tropics dropped down upon them, with none 
of the twilight of higher latitudes. Jud 
grumbled at the novelty. 

“This ain’t no way to do,” he complained 


A NEW WORLD 


3* 

to Professor Ditson. “The sun no more than 
goes down, when bang! it’s as black as your 
hat.” 

“We ’ll have that seen to at once,” re¬ 
sponded the professor, sarcastically. “In the 
meantime, be as patient as you can.” 

With the coming of the dark, a deafening 
din began. Frogs and toads croaked, 
drummed, brayed, and roared. Locusts 
whirred, and a vast variety of crickets and 
grasshoppers added their shrill note to the up¬ 
roar, so strange to visitors and so unnoticed by 
natives in the tropics. 

“Hey, Professor!” shouted Jud, above the 
tumult, “what in time is all this noise, any¬ 
way?” 

“What noise?” inquired Professor Ditson, 
abstractedly. 

The old trapper waved both hands in a 
circle around his head and turned to the boys 
for sympathy. “Sounds like the Cornwall 
Drum and Fife Corps at its worst!” he 
shrieked. 

“What do you mean, Jud?” said Will, wink¬ 
ing at Joe. 


32 


THE INCA EMERALD 


“Poor Jud!” chimed in the latter, shaking 
his head sadly, “this trip too much for him. 
He hearing noises inside his head.” 

For a moment, Jud looked so horrified that, 
in spite of their efforts to keep up the joke, 
the boys broke down and laughed uproar¬ 
iously. 

“You ’ll get so used to this,” said Professor 
Ditson, at last understanding what they were 
talking about, “that after a few nights you 
won’t notice it at all.” 

At the professor’s bungalow they met two 
other members of the expedition. One of 
these was Hen Pine, a negro over six feet tall, 
but with shoulders of such width that he 
seemed much shorter. He had an enormous 
head that seemed to be set directly between 
his shoulders, so short and thick was his neck. 
Hen had been with Professor Ditson for many 
years, and, in spite of his size and strength, 
was of a happy, good-natured disposition, 
constantly showing his white teeth in irresist¬ 
ible smiles. Pinto, Professor Ditson’s other 
retainer, was short and dark, an Indian of the 
Mundurucu tribe, that warlike people which 


A NEW WORLD 


33 


early made an alliance of peace with the Por¬ 
tuguese pioneers of Brazil which they had 
always scrupulously kept. Pinto had an oval 
aquiline face, and his bare breast and arms 
had the cross-marks of dark-blue tattooing 
which showed him to have won high rank 
as a warrior on the lonely River of the 
Tapirs, where his tribe held their own 
against the fierce Mayas, those outlawed can¬ 
nibals who are the terror of the South Amer¬ 
ican forest. 

That evening, after dinner, Professor Ditson 
took Jud and the boys out for a walk along the 
beach which stretched away in front of them 
in a long white curve under the light of the 
full moon. The night was full of strange 
sounds, and in the sky overhead burned new 
stars and unknown constellations, undimmed 
even by the moonlight, which showed like 
snow against the shadows of the jungle. Pro¬ 
fessor Ditson pointed out to the boys Agena 
and Bungula, a noble pair of first-magnitude 
stars never seen in the North, which flamed in 
the violet-black sky. As they looked, Will 
remembered the night up near Wizard Pond 


THE INCA EMERALD 


34 

before the bear came, when Joe had told him 
Indian stories of the stars. To-night, almost 
overhead, shone the most famous of all tropi¬ 
cal constellations, the Southern Cross. 

Professor Ditson told them that it had been 
visible on* the horizon of Jerusalem about the 
date of the Crucifixion. From that day, the 
precession of the equinoxes had carried it 
slowly southward, and it became unknown 
to Europeans until Amerigo Vespucci on 
his ‘first voyage saw and exultantly wrote 
that he had seen the “Four Stars,” of 
which the tradition had lingered. The pro¬ 
fessor told them that it was the sky-clock of 
the tropics and that sailors, shepherds, and 
other night-wanderers could tell the time 
within fifteen minutes of watch-time by the 
position of the two upper stars of this constel¬ 
lation. 

“It looks more like a kite than a cross,” 
interjected Jud. “What’s that dark patch in 
the Milky Way?” he inquired, pointing to a 
strange black, blank space showing in the 
milky glimmer of the galaxy. 

“That must be the Coal-sack,” broke in 


A NEW WORLD 


35 

Will, before Professor Ditson could reply. 

“I remember reading about it at school,” 
he went on. 

“When Magellan sailed around Cape 
Horn, his sailors saw it and were afraid that 
they would sail so far south that the sky 
would n’t have any stars. What cheered 
them up,” went on Will, “was the sight of old 
Orion, which stays in the sky in both hemi¬ 
spheres,” and ‘he pointed out the starry belt to 
Jud and Joe, with the sky-king Sirius shining 
above it instead of below as in the northern 
hemisphere. 

As Jud and the boys stared up at the famil¬ 
iar line of the three stars, with rose-red Be- 
telgeuse on one side and fire-white Rigel on 
the other, they too -felt something-of the same 
comfort that the old-time navigators had 
known at the sight of this constellation, stead¬ 
fast even when the Great Bear and the Pole 
Star itself had faded from the sky. As they 
continued to gaze upward they caught sight 
of another star, which shone with a wild, blue 
gleam which rivaled the gree.n glare of the 
dog-star, Sirius. Professor Ditson told them 


36 THE INCA EMERALD 

that it was Canopus, Mohammed’s star, .which 
he thought led him to victory, even as Napo¬ 
leon believed that the planet Venus, seen by 
daylight, was his guiding star. Then the pro¬ 
fessor traced for them that glittering river of 
stars, Eridanus, and showed them, guarding 
the southern horizon, gleaming Achernar, the 
End of the River, a star as bright as is Arc- 
turus or Vega in the northern sky. Then he 
showed them Fomalhaut, of the Southern 
Fish, which in the North they had seen in the 
fall just skipping the horizon, one of the faint¬ 
est of the first-magnitude stars. Down in the 
southern hemisphere it had come into its own 
and gleamed as brightly near this northern 
horizon as did Achernar by the southern. It 
was Will who discovered the Magellanic 
Clouds, like fragments of the Milky Way 
which had broken up and floated down toward 
the South Pole. These had been also seen and 
reported by Magellan on that first voyage ever 
taken around the world four hundred years 
ago. 

Farther up the beach, Jud and the boys 
came to a full stop. Before them towered 



A NEW WORLD 


37 

so high that the stars seemed tangled in its 
leaves a royal palm, one of the most magni¬ 
ficent trees on earth. Its straight, tapered 
shaft shot up over a hundred and twenty-five 
feet and was crowned with a mass of glossy 
leaves, like deep-green plumes. As it touched 
the violet sky with the full moon rising back 
of its proud head, it had an air of unearthly 
majesty. 

Beneath their feet the beach was covered 
with “angel-wings,” pure white shells eight 
inches long, shaped like the wings of angels in 
old pictures. With them were beautifully 
tinted tellinas, crimson olivias with their won¬ 
derful zigzag, tentlike color patterns, large 
dosinias round as dollars, and many other 
varieties, gold, crimson, and purple. 

Some distance down the beach the professor 
kept a large canoe, in which the whole party 
paddled out into the bay. As they flashed 
over the smooth surface, the clamor of the 
night-life dwindled. Suddenly, from the 
bushes on a little point, sounded a bird-song 
which held them all spellbound, a stream of 
joyous melody, full of rapid, ringing notes, 


38 THE INCA EMERALD 

yet with a purity of tone which made the 
song indescribably beautiful. It seemed to 
include the ethereal quality of the hermit- 
thrush, the lilt and richness of the thrasher, 
and the magic of the veery’s song, and yet to 
be more beautiful than any or all of them 
together. On and on the magic melody flowed 
and rippled, throbbed and ebbed in the moon¬ 
light. Suddenly it stopped. Then from the 
same thicket burst out a medley of different 
songs. Some of them were slow and mellow. 
Others had silvery, bell-like trills. There 
were flutelike calls, gay hurried twitterings, 
and leisurely delicious strains—all of them 
songs of birds which the Cornwall visitors had 
never even heard. Then Will, the ornitholo¬ 
gist of his party, began to hear songs which 
were familiar to him. There was the musical 
chuckle of the purple martin, the plaintive 
call of the upland plover, the curious “kow- 
kow” of the yellow-billed cuckoo, and the 
slow, labored music of the scarlet tanager. 
Suddenly -all of them ceased and once again 
the original song burst out. 


A NEW WORLD 


39 

“That thicket must be chuck-full of birds,” 
whispered Jud. 

Professor Ditson shook his head. 

“It’s only one bird,” he said, “but the great¬ 
est singer of all the world—the white banded 
mocking bird.” 

Even as he spoke, the songster itself fluttered 
up into the air, a brown bird with a white 
throat, and tail and wings broadly banded 
with the same color. Up and up it soared, 
and its notes chimed like a golden bell as its 
incomparable song drifted down through the 
moonlight to those listening below. Then on 
glistening wings the spent singer wavered 
down like some huge moth and disappeared in 
the dark of the thicket. In the silence that 
followed, Will drew a deep breath. 

“I’d have traveled around the world to hear 
that song,” he half whispered. 

Professor Ditson nodded his head under¬ 
standing^. 

“Many and many an ornithologist,” he said 
“has come to South America to listen to that 
bird and gone away without hearing what we 


40 


THE INCA EMERALD 


have heard to-night. Between his own two 
songs,” went on the professor, “I counted the 
notes of seventeen other birds of both North 
and South America that he mimicked.” 

They paddled gently toward the shore, hop¬ 
ing to hear the bird again, but it sang no more 
that night. As they neared the beach, the 
moonlit air was heavy with the scent of jessa¬ 
mine, fragrant only after darkness, and the 
overpowering perfume of night-blooming 
cereuses, whose satin-white blossoms were 
three feet in circumference. Suddenly, just 
before them, the moon-flowers bloomed. 
Great snowy blossoms five inches across began 
to open slowly. There was a puff of wind, 
and hundreds of them burst into bloom at once, 
glorious white salvers of beauty and fragrance. 

“Everything here,” said Will, “seems beau¬ 
tiful and peaceful and safe.” 

Professor Ditson smiled sardonically. 
“South America is beautiful,” he said pre¬ 
cisely, “but it is never safe. Death and danger 
lurk everywhere and in the most unexpected 
forms. It is only in South America,” he 
went on, “that you can be eaten alive by fish 


A NEW WORLD 


4i 

the size of small trout, or be killed by 
ants or little brown bats.” 

Jud listened with much scorn. “Pro¬ 
fessor,” he broke out at last, “I don’t take 
much stock in that kind of talk. Your 
nerves are in a bad way. My advice to you 
is—” 

What Mr. Judson Adams’s advice was, will 
never be known, for at that moment a dread¬ 
ful thing happened. Into the beauty of the 
moonlight, from the glassy water of the bay 
soared a shape of horror, a black, monstrous 
creature like a gigantic bat. It had two 
wings which measured a good twenty feet 
from tip to tip, and was flat, like an enormous 
skate. Behind it streamed a spiked, flexible 
tail, while long feelers, like slim horns, pro¬ 
jected several feet beyond a vast hooked 
mouth. Like some vampire shape from the 
Pit, it skimmed through the air across the bow 
of the canoe not ten feet from where Jud was 
sitting. The old trapper was no coward, but 
this sudden horror was too much even for his 
seasoned nerves. With a yell, he fell back¬ 
ward off his thwart, and as his legs kicked con- 


THE INCA EMERALD 


42 

vulsively in the air, the monster came down 
with a crash that could have been heard a 
mile, raising a wave which nearly swamped 
the canoe. A moment later, the monstrous 
shape broke water again farther seaward, 
blotting out for an instant with its black bulk 
the rising moon. 

“What kind of a sea-devil is that, any¬ 
how?” queried Jud, shakily, as he righted 
himself, with the second crash of the falling 
body still in his ears. 

“That,” responded Professor Ditson, pre¬ 
cisely, “is a well-nourished specimen of the 
manta-ray, a fish allied to the skate family—* 
but you started to speak about nerves.” 

Jud, however, said nothing and kept on say¬ 
ing the same all the way back to the house. 
Arriving there in safety, he went down to the 
spring for some water with Pinto, but a mo¬ 
ment later came bolting back. 

“What’s the matter now, Jud?” inquired 
Will, solicitously. “Did you find another 
water-devil in the spring?” 

“That’s just what I did!” bellowed Jud. 


A NEW WORLD 


41 

“When I started to dip out a pail of water, up 
pops about six feet of snake. Now you know, 
boys,” he went on, panting, “I hate snakes, an’ 
I jumped clear across the spring at the sight 
of this one; but what do you suppose that In¬ 
jun did?” he continued excitedly. “Pats the 
snake’s head an’ tells me it’s tame an’ there to 
keep the spring free from frogs. Now what 
do you think of that?” 

“He was quite right,” observed Professor 
Ditson, soothingly. “It is a perfectly harm¬ 
less, well-behaved serpent, known as the mus- 
sarama. This one is a fine specimen which 
it will be worth your while to examine more 
carefully.” 

“I’ve examined it just as carefully as I’m 
goin’ to,” shouted Jud, stamping into the house 
as Pinto came grunting up the path carry¬ 
ing a brimming bucket of water. 

As they sat down for supper, a long 
streak of black and white flashed across the 
ceiling just over Jud, who sat staring at it 
with a spoonful of soup half-way to his 
mouth. 


44 


THE INCA EMERALD 


“Professor Ditson,” he inquired softly, “is 
that thing on the ceiling another one of your 
tame snakes?” 

“No, sir,” responded the professor, impa¬ 
tiently; “that is only a harmless house-lizard.” 

“I just wanted to know,” remarked Jud, 
rising and taking his plate to a bench out¬ 
side of the door, where he finished his supper, 
in spite of all attempts on the part of the 
boys to bring him back. 

In front of Will stood a pitcher of rich yel¬ 
low cream. “You have a good cow, Professor 
Ditson,” he remarked politely as he poured 
some into a cup of the delicious coffee which 
is served with every meal in Brazil. 

“Yes,” agreed the scientist, “I have a grove 
of them.” Then he explained to the bewil¬ 
dered Will that the cream was the sap of the 
cow tree. 

Will was not so fortunate with his next in¬ 
vestigation. Taking a second helping of a 
good-tasting stew which Pinto had brought in 
from the kitchen, he asked the Indian what it 
was made of. 


A NEW WORLD 


45 

“Tinnala,” replied the Mundurucu. 

“What is it in North American?” persisted 
Will. 

The Indian shook his head. “I not know 
any other name,” he said. “Wait, I show you,” 
he went on, disappearing into the kitchen to 
return a moment later with a long, hairy arm 
ending in a clenched fist. Will started up and 
clasped his stomach frantically, remember¬ 
ing all that he had read about cannibalism 
among the South American Indians. Even 
when Professor Ditson explained that the stew 
was made from a variety of monkey which 
was considered a great delicacy, he was not 
entirely reassured and finished his meal on 
oranges. 

Jud was much amused. “You always were 
a fussy eater, Bill,” he remarked from the 
porch. “I remember you would n’t eat moun¬ 
tain-lion meat up in the North when we were 
after the pearl. You ought to pattern after 
Joe. He don’t find fault with his food.” 

“All I want about food,” grunted Joe, “is 
enough.” 


46 THE INCA EMERALD 

That night the whole party slept side by 
side in hammocks swung in a screened ver¬ 
anda in the second story. 

During the night, Jud, who was always 
a light sleeper, was awakened by a curious, 
rustling, crackling sound which seemed 
to come from the storeroom, which opened 
into the sleeping-porch. After listening 
awhile he reached over and aroused Pro¬ 
fessor Ditson, who was sleeping soundly next 
to him. 

“Some one’s stealin’ your grub,” he whis¬ 
pered. 

The professor stepped lightly out of his 
hammock, followed by Jud and the boys, who 
had been waked up by the whispering. Open¬ 
ing the door noiselessly, the scientist peered in. 
After a long look, Professor Ditson turned 
around to find Jud gripping his revolver and 
ready for the worst. 

“You can put up your gun,” the scientist 
growled. “Bullets don’t mean anything to 
thieves like these, and he flashed a light on a 
strange sight. On a long table stood native 
baskets full of cassava, that curious grainlike 


A NEW WORLD 47 

substance obtained from the root of the poison¬ 
ous manihot and which takes the place of 
wheat in South America. The floor was 
covered with moving columns of ants, large 
and small, which had streamed up the legs of 
the table and into the baskets. Some of them 
were over an inch long, while others were 
smaller than the grains they were carrying. 
The noise which had aroused Jud had been 
made by their cutting off the dry leaves with 
which the baskets were lined, to use in lining 
their underground nest. Professor Ditson 
told them that nothing could stop an ant-army. 
Once on the march, they would not turn back 
for fire or water and would furiously attack 
anything that tried to check them. “A re¬ 
markably efficient insect,” concluded the pro¬ 
fessor, “for it bites with one end and stings 
with the other.” 

“This is what I call a nice quiet night!” 
murmured Jud, as he went back to his ham¬ 
mock. “Sea-devils, snakes, lizards—and now 
it’s ants. I wonder what next?” 

“Next,” however, was daylight, blazing 
with the startling suddenness of the tropics, 


48 THE INCA EMERALD 

where there is no dawn-light. With the light, 
the tumult of the night ceased, and in place 
of the insect din came a medley of bird-notes. 
When Jud opened his eyes Professor Ditson’s 
hammock was empty, for the scientist usually 
got up long before daylight, and through the 
open door strutted a long-legged, wide-winged 
bird, nearly three feet tall, with a shimmering 
blue breast and throat. Without hesitating, 
she walked over to Jud’s hammock and, 
spread her wings with a deep murmuring 
note, made a low bow. 

“Good morning to you,” responded Jud, 
much pleased with his visitor. 

The bird bowed and murmured again and 
allowed him to pat her beautiful head as 
she bent forward. Then she went to the next 
hammock and the next and the next, until she 
had awakened all of the sleepers, whereupon, 
with deep bows and courtesies and murmur- 
ings, she sidled out of the room. 

“Now, that,” said Jud, as he rolled out of 
the hammock and began to look for his shoes, 
“is an alarm-clock worth having!” 

Pinto, the Mundurucu, who appeared at 


A NEW WORLD 


49 


this moment with a pail of spring water, told 
them that the bird was a tame female trum¬ 
peter which he had picked up as a queer, 
frightened little creature, all legs and neck, 
but which had become one of the best-loved of 
all of his many pets. Each morning the tame, 
beautiful bird would wander through the 
house, waking up every sleeper at sunrise. 
When Pinto took trips through the forest the 
bird always went with him, traveling on his 
back in a large-meshed fiber bag; and when 
he made camp it would parade around for a 
while, bowing and talking, and then fly up 
into the nearest tree, where it would spend 
the night. Tente, as it was named, was al¬ 
ways gentle except when it met a dog. No 
matter how large or fierce the latter might be, 
Tente would fly at it, making a loud, rum¬ 
bling noise, which always made the dog turn 
tail and run for its life. 

As Pinto started to fill the pitchers, Will, 
the bird expert of the party, began to ask him 
about some of the songs which were sound¬ 
ing all around the house. One bird which 
squalled and mewed interested him. 


50 THE INCA EMERALD 

“That bird chestnut cuckoo,” said Pinto. 
“It have the soul of a cat.” 

And as Will listened he could well believe 
it. A little farther off, ‘another bird called 
constantly, “Crispen, Crispen, Crispen.” 

“One time,” narrated the Indian, “a-girl and 
her little brother Crispen go walking in the 
woods. He very little boy and he wander 
away and get lost, and all day and all night 
and all next day she go through the woods 
calling, ‘Crispen! Crispen! Crispen!’ until at 
last she changed into a little bird. And still 
she flies through the woods and calls ‘Cris¬ 
pen!’ ” 

At this point, Jud finally found his missing 
shoes and started to put one on, but stopped 
at a shout from the Mundurucu. 

“Shake it out!” warned Pinto. “No one 
ever puts on shoes in this country without 
shaking out.” 

Jud did as he was told. With the first 
shoe he drew a blank. Out of the second 
one, however, rattled down on the floor a centi¬ 
pede fully six inches long, which Pinto skill¬ 
fully crushed with the heavy water-pitcher. 


A NEW WORLD 


Si 


Jud gasped and sank back into his hammock. 

“Boys,” he said solemnly, “I doubt if I last 
out this trip 1” 


CHAPTER III 


THE VAMPIRES 

A FTER breakfast, Professor Amandus 
Ditson called the party together for a 
conference in a wide, cool veranda on 
the ground floor. 

“I should like to outline to you my plan of 
our expedition,” he announced precisely. 

Jud gave an angry grunt. The old adven¬ 
turer, who had been a hero among prospectors 
and trappe'rs in the Far North, was accus¬ 
tomed- to be consulted in any expedition of 
which he was a member. 

“It seems to me, Professor Ditson,” he re¬ 
marked aggressively, “that you ’re pretty up¬ 
pity about this trip. Other people here have 
had experience in treasure-huntin’.” 

“Meaning yourself, I presume,” returned 
Professor Ditson, acidly. 

“Yes, sir!” shouted Jud, thoroughly aroused, 

52 


THE VAMPIRES 


S3 

'‘that’s exactly who I do mean. I know as 
much about— ouch!” The last exclamation 
came when Jud brought down his open hand 
for emphasis on the side of his chair and in- 
cidently on a lurid brown insect nearly three 
inches in length, with enormous nippers and a 
rounded body ending in what looked like a 
long sting. Jud jerked his hand away and 
gazed in horror at his threatening seat-mate. 

“I believe I’m stung,” he murmured 
faintly, gazing anziously at his hand. “What 
is it?” 

“It would hardly seem to me,” observed 
Professor Ditson, scathingly, “that a man who 
is afraid of a harmless arachnid like a whip- 
scorpion, and who nearly falls out of a canoe 
at the sight of a manta-ray disporting itself, 
would be the one to lead an expedition through 
the unexplored wilds of South America. We 
are going into a country,” he went on more 
earnestly, “where a hasty step, the careless 
touching of a tree, or the tasting of a leaf 
or fruit may mean instant death, to say nothing 
of the dangers from some of the larger car¬ 
nivora and wandering cannibals. I have had 


THE INCA EMERALD 


54 

some experience with this region,” he went 
on, “and if there is no objection, I will outline 
my plan.” 

There was none. Even Jud, who had re¬ 
moved himself to another chair with great 
rapidity, had not a word to say. 

“I propose that we take a steamer by the end 
of this week to Manaos, a thousand miles up 
the Amazon,” continued the professor. “In 
the meantime, we can do some hunting and 
collecting in this neighborhood. After we 
reach Manaos we can go by boat down the Rio 
Negros until we strike the old Slave Trail 
which leads across the Amazon basin and.up 
into the highlands of Peru.” 

“Who made that trail?” inquired Will, 
much interested. 

“It was cut by the Spanish conquerors of 
Peru nearly four hundred years ago,” re¬ 
turned the scientist. “They used to send expe¬ 
ditions down into the Amazon region after 
slaves to work their mines. Since then,” he 
went on, “it has been kept open by the Indians 
themselves, and, as far as I know, has not been 
traversed by a white man for centuries. I 


THE VAMPIRES 


55 

learned the secret of it many years ago, while 
I was living with one of the wilder tribes,” he 
finished. 

The professor’s plan was adopted unani¬ 
mously, Jud not voting. 

Then followed nearly a week of wonderful 
hunting and collecting. Even Jud, who re¬ 
garded everything with a severe and jaun¬ 
diced eye, could not conceal his interest in the 
multitude of wonderful new sights, sounds, 
and scents which they experienced every day. 
As for Will, he lived in the delightful excite¬ 
ment which only a bird-student knows who 
finds himself surrounded by a host of unknown 
and beautiful birds. Some of them, unlike 
good children, were heard but not seen. Once, 
as they pushed their way in single file along a 
little path which wound through the jungle, 
there suddenly sounded, from the dark depths 
beyond, a shriek of agony and despair. In 
a moment it was taken up by another voice and 
another and another, until there were at least 
twenty screamers performing in chorus. 

“It’s only the ypicaha rail,” remarked the 
professor, indifferently. 


56 THE INCA EMERALD 

Hen Pine, who was in the rear with Will, 
shook his head doubtfully. 

“Dis oV jungle,” he whispered, “is full o’ 
squallers. De professor he call ’em birds, but 
dey sound more like ha’nts to me.” 

Beyond the rail colony they heard at inter¬ 
vals a hollow, mysterious cry. 

“That,” explained Pinto, “is the Witch of 
the Woods. No one ever sees her unless she 
is answered. Then she comes and drives mad 
the one who called her.” 

“Nice cheery place, this!” broke in Jud. 

“The alleged witch,” remarked Professor 
Ditson severely, “happens to be the little 
waterhen.” 

Later they heard a strange, clanging noise, 
which sounded as if some one had struck a 
tree with an iron bar, and at intervals from the 
deepest part of the forest there came a single, 
wild, fierce cry. Even Professor Ditson 
could not identify these sounds. 

“Dem most suttinly is ha’nts,” volunteered 
Hen. “I know ’em. You would n’t catch dis 
chile goin’ far alone in dese woods.” 


THE VAMPIRES 57 

One of the smaller birds which interested 
Will was the many-colored knight, which 
looked much like one of the northern kinglets. 
His little body, smaller than that of a house- 
wren, showed seven colors—black, white, 
green, blue, orange, yellow, and scarlet, and 
he had a blue crown and a sky-blue eye. 
Moreover, his nest, fastened to a single rush, 
was a marvel of skill and beauty, being made 
entirely of soft bits of dry, yellow sedge, ce¬ 
mented together with gum so smoothly that 
it looked as if it had been cast in a mold. 
Then there was the Bienteveo tyrant, a bird 
about nine inches long, which caught fish,, 
flies, and game, and fed on fruit and carrion 
indiscriminately. It was entirely devoted to 
its mate, and whenever a pair of tyrants were 
separated, they would constantly call back and 
forth to each other reassuringly, even when 
they were hunting. When they finally met 
again, they would perch close to each other 
and scream joyously at being reunited. An¬ 
other bird of the same family, the scarlet ty¬ 
rant, all black and scarlet, was so brilliant that 


58 THE INCA EMERALD 

even the rainbow-hued tanagers seemed pale 
and the jeweled humming-bird sad-colored in 
the presence of “coal-o’-fire,” as the Indians 
have named this bird. 

Jud was more impressed with the wonders 
of the vegetable kingdom. Whenever he 
strayed off the beaten path or tried to cut his 
way through a thicket, he tangled himself in 
the curved spines of the pull-and-haul-back 
vine, a thorny shrub which lives up to its name, 
or was stabbed by the devil-plant, a sprawling 
cactus which tries quite successfully to fill up 
all the vacant spaces in the jungle where it 
grows. Each stem of this well-named shrub 
had three or four angles, and each angle was 
lined with thorns an inch or more in length, 
so sharp and strong that they pierced Jud’s 
heavy hunting-boots like steel needles. If it 
had not been for Hen, who was a master with 
the machete, Jud never would have broken 
loose from his entanglements. Beyond the cac¬ 
tus, the old trapper came to a patch of poor- 
man’s plaster, a shrub with attractive yellow 
flowers, but whose leaves, which broke off at 
a touch, were covered on the under side with 


THE VAMPIRES 


59 

barbed hairs, which caught and clung to any 
one touching them. The farther Jud went, the 
more he became plastered with these sticky 
leaves, until he began to look like some huge 
chrysalis. The end came when he tripped on 
a network of invisible wires, the stems of 
species of smilax and morning-glory, and 
rolled over and over in a thicket of the plas¬ 
ters. When at last he gained his feet, he 
looked like nothing human, but seemed only 
a walking mass of green leaves and clinging 
stems. 

“Yah, yah, yah!” roared Hen. “Mars’ Jud 
he look des like Br’er Rabbit did when he 
spilled Br’er Bear’s bucket o’ honey over his- 
self an’ rolled in leafs tryin’ to clean his- 
self. Mars’ Jud sure look like de grand-daddy 
ob all de ha’nts in dese yere woods.” 

“Shut up, you fool darky,” said Jud, de¬ 
cidedly miffed. “Come and help unwrap me. 
I feel like a cigar.” 

Hen laughed so that it was with difficulty 
that he freed Jud, prancing with impatience, 
from his many layers of leaves. Later on, 
Hen showed himself to be an even more pres- 


6o 


THE INCA EMERALD 


ent help in trouble. The two were following 
a path a short distance away from the rest of 
the party, with Jud in the lead. Suddenly 
the trapper heard the slash of the negro’s 
machete just behind him, and turned around 
to see him cutting the head from a coiled rat¬ 
tlesnake over which Jud had stepped. If 
Jud had stopped or touched the snake with 
either foot, he would most certainly have been 
bitten, and it spoke well for Hen’s presence of 
mind that he kept perfectly quiet until the 
danger was over. This South American rat¬ 
tlesnake had a smaller head and rougher scales 
than any of the thirteen North American va¬ 
rieties, and was nearly six feet in length. Pro¬ 
fessor Ditson was filled with regret that it 
had not been caught alive. 

“Never kill a harmless snake,” he said se¬ 
verely to Hen, “without consulting me. I 
would have been glad to have added this speci¬ 
men to the collection of the Zoological Gar¬ 
dens.” 

“Harmless!” yelled Jud, much incensed. 
“A rattlesnake harmless! How do you get 
that way?” 


THE VAMPIRES 


61 


“He did n’t do you any harm, did he?” re¬ 
torted the professor, acidly. “It is certainly 
ungrateful of you to slander a snake just after 
he has saved your life.” 

“How did he save my life?” asked Jud. 

“By not biting you,” returned Professor 
Ditson, promptly. 

A little later poor Jud had a hair-raising 
experience with another snake. He had shot 
a carancha, that curious South American 
hawk which wails and whines when it is 
happy, and, although a fruit-eater with weak 
claws and only a slightly hooked beak, at¬ 
tacks horses and kills lambs. Jud had tucked 
his specimen into a back pocket of his shoot¬ 
ing-jacket and was following a little path 
which led through an open space in the 
jungle. He had turned over his shot-gun to 
Joe, and was trying his best to keep clear of 
any more tangling vines, when suddenly right 
beside him a great dark snake reared its head 
until its black glittering eyes looked level into 
Jud’s, and its flickering tongue was not a foot 
from his face. With a yell, Jud broke the 
world’s record for the back-standing broad- 


62 


THE INCA EMERALD 


jump and tore down the trail shouting, “Bush- 
master! bushmaster!” at the top of his voice. 
As he ran he suddenly felt a sharp pain in his 
back. 

“He’s got me!” he called back to Hen Pine, 
who came hurrying after him. “Ouch! 
There he goes again!” and he plunged head¬ 
long into a patch of pull-and-haul-back vine, 
which anchored him until Hen came up. 

“Dat ain’t no bushmaster, Mars’ Jud,” the 
latter called soothingly. “Dat was only a 
trail-haunting blacksnake. He like to lie next 
to a path an’ stick up his ol’ head to see who’s 
cornin’, kin’ o’ friendly like.” 

“Friendly nothin’!” groaned Jud. “He’s 
just bit me again.” 

As soon as Hen laid hold of Jud’s jacket he 
found out what was the matter. The hawk 
had only been stunned by Jud’s shot and, com¬ 
ing to life again, had promptly sunk his claws 
into the latter’s back, and Jud had mistaken 
the bird’s talons for the fangs of the bush¬ 
master. Professor Ditson, who had hurried 
up, was much disappointed. 


THE VAMPIRES 


63 

“If you ever meet a bushmaster, you ’ll 
learn the difference between it and a harm¬ 
less blacksnake,” he observed. “Probably, 
however,” he went on thoughtfully, “it will 
be too late to do you much good.” 

“Why do all the snakes in South America 
pick on me?” complained Jud. “There don’t 
seem to be nothin’ here but snakes an’ 
thorns.” 

It was Pinto who gave the old trapper his 
first favorable impression of the jungle. 
They had reached a deserted bungalow in 
the heart of the woods, which Professor Dit- 
son had once made his headquarters a num¬ 
ber of years before. There they planned to 
have lunch and spend the night. At the meal 
Jud showed his usual good appetite in spite 
of his misfortunes, but he complained after¬ 
ward to Hen, who had attached himself spe¬ 
cially to the old man, about the absence of 
dessert. 

“I got a kind of a sweet tooth,” he said. 
“You ain’t got a piece of pie handy, have 
you?” 


64 THE INCA EMERALD 

“No sah, no sah,” replied Hen, regretfully. 
“You ’s about three thousand miles south ob 
de pie-belt.” 

“Wait,” broke in Pinto, who had been listen¬ 
ing. “Wait a minute; I get you something 
sweet,” and he led the way to an enormous 
tree with reddish, ragged bark. Some dis¬ 
tance up its trunk was a deep hollow, out of 
which showed a spout of dark wax nearly 
two feet long. In and out of this buzzed a 
cloud of bees. 

“I get you!” shouted Jud, much delighted, 
“a bee-tree! Look out, boy,” he went on, as 
the Indian, clinging to the ridges of the bark 
with his fingers and toes, began to climb. 
“Those bees ’ll sting you to death.” 

“South American bees hab no sting,” ex¬ 
plained Hen, as Pinto reached the wax spout, 
and, breaking it off, thrust his hand fearlessly 
through the cloud of bees into the store of 
honey beyond. A moment later, and he was 
back again, laden with masses of dripping 
honeycomb, the cells of which, instead of 
being six-sided, as with our northern bees, 
resembled each one a little bottle. The honey 


THE VAMPIRES 65 

was clear and sweet, yet had a curious tart 
flavor. While Jud was sampling a bit of 
honeycomb, Pinto borrowed Hen’s machete 
and cut a deep gash through the rough red 
bark of the tree. Immediately there flowed 
out from the cut the same thick, milky juice 
which they had seen at their first breakfast 
in South America. The Indian cut a sep¬ 
arate gash for each one of the party, and they 
all finished their meal with draughts of the 
sweet, creamy juice. 

“It sure is a land flowing with milk an’ 
honey,” remarked Jud, at last, after he had 
eaten and drunk all that he could hold. 

“This vegetable milk is particularly rich 
in gluten,” observed Professor Ditson, learn¬ 
edly. 

“I guess it’d gluten up a fellow’s stomach 
all right if he drank too much of it,” re¬ 
marked Jud, smacking his lips over the sweet, 
sticky taste which the juice of the cow-tree 
left in his mouth. 

After lunch, most of the party retired to 
their hammocks in the cool dark of the house 
for the siesta which South American travelers 


66 


THE INCA EMERALD 


find an indispensable part of a tropical day. 
Only the scientist and Will stayed awake to 
catch butterflies through the scented silence of 
the forest where the air, filled with the steam 
and perfume of a green blaze of growth, had 
the wet hotness of a conservatory. When even 
the insects and the untiring tree-toads were 
silenced by the sun, Professor Ditson, wear¬ 
ing a gray linen suit with a low collar and a 
black tie, was as enthusiastic as ever over the 
collecting of rare specimens, and was greatly 
pleased at Will’s interest in his out-of-door 
hobbies. 

Together they stepped into the jungle, where 
scarlet passion-flowers shone like stars through 
the green. Almost immediately they began 
to see butterflies. The first one was a magnifi¬ 
cent grass-green specimen, closely followed by 
others whose iridescent, mother-of-pearl 
wings gleamed in the sunlight like bits of 
rainbow. On a patch of damp sand a group 
made a cloud of sulphur-yellow, sapphire- 
blue, and gilded green-and-orange. The pro¬ 
fessor told Will that in other years he had 
found over seven hundred different kinds 


THE VAMPIRES 


67 

within an hour’s walk from this forest bunga¬ 
low, being more than double the number of 
varieties found in all Europe. 

Deep in the jungle, they at last came to a 
little open stretch where the Professor had 
often collected before and which to-day 
seemed full of butterflies. Never had Will 
imagined such a riot of color and beauty as 
there dazzled his eyes. Some of the butter¬ 
flies were red and yellow, the colors of Spain. 
Others were green, purple, and blue, bordered 
and spangled with spots of silver and gold. 
Then there were the strange transparent 
“glass-wings.” One of these, the Hetaira 
esmeralda, Will was convinced must be the 
most beautiful of all flying creatures. Its 
wings were like clear glass, with a spot of 
mingled violet and rose in the center of each 
one. At a distance, only this shimmering spot 
could be seen rising and falling through the 
air, like the wind-borne petals of some beauti¬ 
ful flower. Indeed, as the procession of color 
drifted by, it seemed to the boy as if all the 
loveliest flowers on earth had taken to them¬ 
selves wings, or that the rainbow-bridge of 


68 


THE INCA EMERALD 


the sky had been shattered into fragments 
which were drifting slowly down to earth. 

The largest of them all were the swallow¬ 
tails, belonging to the same family as the tiger, 
and blue and black swallowtail, which Will 
had so often caught in Cornwall. One of 
that family gleamed in the sunlight like a 
blue meteor as it flapped its great wings, seven 
inches from tip to tip and of a dazzling blue, 
high above the tree-tops. Another member 
of the same family, and nearly as large, was 
satiny white in color. Professor Ditson told 
Will that both of these varieties were almost 
unknown in any collection, as they never 
came within twenty feet of the ground, so 
that the only specimens secured were those of 
disabled or imperfect butterflies which had 
dropped to the lower levels. 

“Why could n’t I climb to the top of one 
of those trees with a net and catch some?” in¬ 
quired Will, looking wistfully up at the gleam¬ 
ing shapes flitting through the air so far above 
him. 

“Fire-ants and wasps,” returned the pro¬ 
fessor, concisely. “They are found in virtu- 


THE VAMPIRES 


69 

ally every tree. No one can stand the pain 
of an ant’s bite, and one sting of a Maribundi 
wasp has been known to kill a strong man.” 

That night, tired out by their long day of 
hunting, the whole party went to bed early. 
Will’s sleeping-room was an upper screened 
alcove, just large enough to hold a single ham¬ 
mock. Somehow, even after his long hard 
day, he did not feel sleepy. Great trees shad¬ 
owed his corner, so thick that even the stars 
could not shine through their leaves, and it 
seemed to Will as if he could stretch out his 
hands and lift up dripping masses of black¬ 
ness, smothering, terrifying in its denseness. 
From a far-away tree-top the witch-owl mut¬ 
tered over and over again that mysterious 
word of evil, “Murucututu, murucututu,” in 
a forgotten Indian tongue. He had laughed 
when Pinto told him a few nights before that 
the owl was trying to lay a spell on those who 
listened, but to-night in the dark he did not 
laugh. 

Then close at hand in a neighborhood tree- 
top sounded a beautiful contralto frog-note 
slowly repeated. “Gul, gul, gul, gul, guggle, 


70 


THE INCA EMERALD 


gul, guggle,” it throbbed. The slow, sweet 
call gave the boy a sense of companionship, 
and he fell asleep with the music of it still 
sounding in his ears. 

Toward midnight he woke with a vague 
sense of uneasiness. It was as if some hidden 
subconsciousness of danger had sounded an 
alarm note within his nerve centers and 
awakened him. Something seemed to be mov¬ 
ing and whispering outside of the screened 
alcove. Then a body struck the screen of 
mosquito-netting, and he heard the rotten 
fiber rip. Another second, and his little 
room was filled with moving, flitting, invis¬ 
ible shapes. Great wings fanned the air just 
above his face. There was the faint reek of 
hot, furry bodies passing back and forth and 
all around him. For a moment Will lay 
thinking that he was in a nightmare, for he 
had that strange sense of horror which par¬ 
alyzes one’s muscles during a bad dream so 
that movement is impossible. At last, by a 
sudden effort, he stretched out his hand and 
struck a match from a box which stood on a 
stand beside his hammock. At the quick 


THE VAMPIRES 71 

spurt of flame through the dark, from all 
parts of the little room came tiny, shrill 
screeches, and the air around him was black 
with whirling, darting shapes. Suddenly into 
the little circle of light from the match swept 
the horrible figure of a giant bat, whose leath¬ 
ern wings had a spread of nearly two and a 
half feet, and whose horrible face hovered 
and hung close to his own. Never had the 
boy believed that any created thing could be 
so grotesquely hideous. The face that peered 
into his own was flanked on each side by 
an enormous leathery ear. From the tip 
of the hairy muzzle grew a spearlike spike, 
and the grinning mouth was filled with rows 
of irregular, tiny, gleaming sharp teeth, grit¬ 
ting and clicking against each other. Deep- 
set little green eyes, which glistened and 
gleamed like glass, glared into Will’s face. 
Before he could move, a great cloud of fly¬ 
ing bats, large and small, settled down upon 
him. Some of them were small gray vam¬ 
pire-bats with white markings, others were 
the great fruit-eating bats, and there were still 
others dark-red, tawny-brown, and fox-yel- 


72 


THE INCA EMERALD 


low. Whirling and wheeling around the 
little point of flame, they dashed it out, and 
crawled all over the boy until he felt stifled 
and smothered with the heat of their cling¬ 
ing bodies. 

Suddenly he felt a stinging pain in his bare 
shoulder and in one of his exposed feet. As 
he threw out his hands desperately, tiny click¬ 
ing teeth cut the flesh of wrists and arms. 
The scent of blood seemed to madden the 
whole company of these deaths-in-the-dark, 
and, although the actual bites were made by 
the little vampire-bats, yet at the sight of them 
(feasting, the other night-fliers descended 
upon the boy like a black cloud and clustered 
around the little wounds, as Will had seen 
moths gather around syrup spread on trees of 
a warm June night. 

The sting of their bites lasted for only a 
second, and the flapping of their wings made 
a cool current of air which seemed to drug 
his senses. Dreamily he felt them against 
him, knew that they were draining his life, 
yet lacked the will-power to drive them away. 


THE VAMPIRES 


73 

Suddenly there flashed into his mind all that 
he had heard and read of the deadly methods 
of these dark enemies of mankind. With a 
shriek, he threw out his arms through the 
furry cloud that hung over him and sprang 
out of his hammock. 

At his scream, Professor Ditson rushed in 
with a flash-light, followed by Pinto, Hen, 
and Joe, while Jud slept serenely through the 
whole tumult. They found Will dripping 
with blood from a dozen little punctures made 
by the sharp teeth of the bats, and almost ex¬ 
hausted from fright and the loss of blood. 
Then came pandemonium. Seizing sticks, 
brooms, machetes, anything that came to hand, 
while Will sank back into his hammock, the 
others attacked the bats. Lighted by the flash 
of Professor Ditson’s electric light, they drove 
the squeaking, shrieking cloud of dark figures 
back and forth through the little room until 
the last one had escaped through the torn 
netting or was lying dead on the floor. 

Twenty-seven bats altogether were piled in 
a heap when the fight was over. 


CHAPTER IV 


DEATH RIVER 

A T last their first week in this new world 
of beauty and mystery came to an end. 
At Belem they boarded a well-ap¬ 
pointed steamer and embarked for the thou¬ 
sand-mile voyage to Manaos, which is only six 
degrees from the equator and one of the hot¬ 
test cities of the world. There followed an¬ 
other week of a life that was strange and new 
to the travelers from Cornwall. There were 
silent, steaming days when the earth seemed to 
swoon beneath the glare of the lurid sun, and 
only at night would a breath of air cross the 
water, which gleamed like a silver burning- 
glass. For their very lives’ sake, white men 
and Indians alike had learned to keep as quiet 
and cool as possible during those fiery hours. 
Only Hen, coming from a race that since the 
birth of time had lived close to the equator, 

74 


DEATH RIVER 


75 

moved about with a cheerfulness which no 
amount of heat or humidity could lessen. At 
night, when the fatal sun had reluctantly dis¬ 
appeared in a mass of pink and violet clouds, 
the life-bringing breeze would blow in fresh 
and salt from the far-away sea, and all living 
creatures would revive. The boys soon 
learned that, in the mid-heat of a tropical sum¬ 
mer, the night was the appointed time for 
play and work, and they slept during the day 
as much as possible in shaded, airy hammocks. 

One evening, after an unusually trying day, 
the night wind sprang up even before the sun 
had set. Here and there, across the surface 
of the river, flashed snow-white swallows with 
dark wings. As the fire-gold of the sun 
touched the horizon, the silver circle of the 
full moon showed in the east, and for a mo¬ 
ment the two great lights faced each other. 
Then the sun slipped behind the rim of the 
world, and the moon rose higher and higher, 
while the Indian crew struck up a wailing 
chant full of endless verses, with a strange 
minor cadence like the folk-songs of the 


76 THE INCA EMERALD 

Southern negro. Hen Pine translated the 
words of some of them, and crooned the wail¬ 
ing melody: 

“The moon is rising, 

Mother, Mother, 

The seven stars are weeping, 

Mother, Mother, 

To find themselves forsaken, 

Mother, Mother.” 

Down the echoing channels, through the end¬ 
less gloomy forests, the cadence of the song 
rose and fell. 

Suddenly, in the still moonlight from the 
river-bank came a single low note of ethereal 
beauty and unutterable sorrow. Slowly it 
rose and swelled, keeping its heartbreaking 
quality and exquisite beauty. At the sound 
the men stopped singing, and it seemed as if 
an angel were sobbing in the stillness. On 
and on the song went, running through eight 
lonely, lovely notes which rose and swelled 
until there seemed to be nothing in the world 
except that beautiful voice, finally ending in a 
sob which brought the tears to Will’s eyes. 


DEATH RIVER 


77 

Then out into the moonlight flitted the singer, 
a quiet-colored little brown-and-gray bird, the 
celebrated solitaire, the sweetest, saddest 
singer of the Brazilian forest. 

After all this music, supper was served. It 
began with a thick, violet-colored drink in 
long glasses filled with cracked ice. The boys 
learned from Professor Ditson that this was 
made from the fruit of the assai-palm. It was 
strangely compounded of sweet and sour and 
had besides a fragrance and a tingle which 
made it indescribably refreshing. This was 
followed by an iced preparation made from 
the root of the manioc, whose juice is poison¬ 
ous, but whose pulp is wholesome and delic¬ 
ious. Before being served it had been boiled 
with the fruit of the miriti-palm, which added 
a tart sweetness to its taste which the North¬ 
erners found most delightful. The next 
course was a golden-yellow compound of a 
rich, nutty flavor, the fruit of the mucuju- 
palm, which has a yellow, fibrous pulp so full 
of fat that vultures, dogs, and cats eat it greed¬ 
ily. For dessert, there was a great basket of 


78 THE INCA EMERALD 

sweet lemons, mangos, oranges, custard-apples, 
and other fruits. 

After supper they all grouped themselves 
in the bow and there, in comfortable steamer- 
chairs, watched the steamer plow its way 
through a river of ink and silver. That day, 
Jud, while in his hammock, had seen, to his 
horror, what seemed to be a slender vine, dan¬ 
gling from one of the trees, change into a pale- 
green snake some eight feet long, whose 
strange head was prolonged into a slender, 
pointed beak. Even as the old man stared, it 
flashed across the deck not two feet away from 
him and disappeared in another tree. So per¬ 
fectly did its color blend with the leaves that 
the instant it reached them it seemed to vanish 
from sight. 

“It was the palm-snake,” said Professor Dit- 
son, after Jud told them of his experience. 
“It lives on lizards, and, although venomous, 
has never been known to bite a human being. 
If you had only been brave enough,” he went 
on severely, “to catch it with your naked 
hand, we might even now have an invalu- 


DEATH RIVER 


79 

able record of the effects of its venom.” 

“What is the most venomous snake in the 
world?” broke in Will, as Jud tried to think 
of words strong enough to express what he 
thought of the scientist’s suggestion. 

“The hamadryad or king cobra,” returned 
the professor. “I once secured one over 
fourteen feet long.” 

• “How did you catch it?” queried Will. 

“Well,” said the professor, “I came across 
it by a fortunate accident. I was collecting 
butterflies in India at a time of the year when 
it is especially pugnacious, and this particu¬ 
lar snake dashed out of a thicket at me. It 
came so unexpectedly that I had to run for 
my life. It seems ridiculous that I should 
have done so,” he went on apologetically, 
“but the bite of the hamadryad is absolutely 
fatal. This one gained on me so rapidly 
that I was at last compelled to plunge into a 
near-by pond, since this variety of snake never 
willingly enters water.” 

“What happened then?” inquired Will, as 
the scientist came to a full stop. 


8o 


THE INCA EMERALD 


“When I reached the opposite shore, a 
quarter of a mile away, and was about to 
land,” returned the professor, “out of the 
rushes this same snake reared up some six feet. 
With the rare intelligence which makes the 
hamadryad such a favorite among collectors, 
it had circled the lake and was waiting for 
me.” 

“Snappy work!” said Jud, shivering. “I 
can’t think of any pleasanter finish to a good 
swim than to find a nice fourteen-foot snake 
waitin’ for me. What did you do then?” 

“I floated around in deep water until my 
assistant came and secured the snake with a 
forked stick. It is now in the New York 
Zoological Gardens at the Bronx,” concluded 
the professor. 

Jud drew a deep breath. “That reminds 
me,” he said at last, “of a time I once had 
with a pizen snake when I was a young man. 
I was hoein’ corn up on a side hill in Corn¬ 
wall when I was about sixteen year old,” he 
continued. “All on a sudden I heard a 
rattlin’ an’ down the hill in one of the fur¬ 
rows came rollin’ a monstrous hoop-snake. 


DEATH RIVER 


81 


You know,” he explained, “a hoop-snake has 
an ivory stinger in its tail an’ rolls along the 
ground like a hoop, an’ when it strikes it 
straightens out an’ shoots through the air just 
like a spear.” 

“I know nothing of the kind,” broke in 
Professor Ditson. 

“Well,” said Jud, unmoved by the inter¬ 
ruption, “when I saw this snake a-rollin’ an’ 
a-rattlin’ down the hill towards me, I dived 
under the fence an’ put for home, leavin’ my 
hoe stickin’ up straight in the furrow. As I 
slid under the fence,” he went on, “I heard a 
thud, an’ looked back just in time to see the 
old hoop-snake shoot through the air an’ stick 
its stinger deep into the hoe-handle. It sure 
was a pizen snake, all right,” he went on, 
wagging his head solemnly. “When I came 
back, an hour or so later, the snake was gone, 
but that hoe-handle had swelled up pretty 
nigh as big as my leg.” 

There was a roar of laughter from Will 
and Joe, while Jud gazed mournfully out 
over the water. Professor Ditson was vastly 
indignant. 


82 


THE INCA EMERALD 


“I feel compelled to state,” he said emphat¬ 
ically, “that there is no such thing as a hoop- 
snake and that no snake-venom would have 
any effect on a hoe-handle.” 

“Have it your way,” said Jud. “It ain’t 
very polite of you to doubt my snake story 
after I swallowed yours without a word.” 

At Manaos they left the steamer, and Pro¬ 
fessor Ditson bought for the party a mon- 
taria, a big native boat without a rudder, 
made of plank and propelled by narrow, 
pointed paddles. Although Hen and Pinto 
and the Professor were used to this kind of 
craft, it did not appeal at all favorably to 
the Northerners, who were accustomed to the 
light bark-canoes and broad-bladed paddles 
of the Northern Indians. Joe was especially 
scornful. 

“This boat worse than a dug out,” he 
objected. “It heavy and clumsy and pad¬ 
dles no good either.” 

“You’ll find it goes all right on these 
rivers,” Professor Ditson reassured him. 
“We only have a few hundred miles more, 
anyway before we strike the Trail.” 


DEATH RIVER 83 

Under the skilful handling of Hen and 
Pinto, the montaria, although it seemed un- 
wieldly, turned out to be a much better craft 
than it looked; and when the Northerners 
became used to the narrow paddles, the ex¬ 
pedition made great headway, the boys find¬ 
ing the wide boat far more comfortable for 
a long trip than the smaller, swifter canoe. 

After a day, a night, and another day of 
paddling, they circled a wide bend, and there, 
showing like ink in the moonlight, was the 
mouth of another river. 

“White men call it Rio Negros, Black 
River,” the Indian explained to the boys; 
“but my people call it the River of Death.” 

As the professor, who was steering with a 
paddle, swung the prow of the boat into the 
dark water, the Indian protested earnestly. 

“It very bad luck, Master to enter Death 
River by night,” he said. 

“Murucututu, murucututu,” muttered the 
witch-owl, from an overhanging branch. 

Hen joined in Pinto’s protest. 

“That owl be layin’ a spell on us, Boss,” He 
said. “Better wait till mornin’.” 


84 THE INCA EMERALD 

The professor was inflexible. 

“I have no patience with any such super¬ 
stitions,” he said. We can cover fully twenty- 
five miles before morning.” 

The Mundurucu shook his head and said 
nothing more, but Hen continued his pro¬ 
tests, even while paddling. 

“Never knew any good luck to come when 
that ol’ owl’s around,” he remarked mourn¬ 
fully. “It was him that sicked them vampires 
on to Will here, an’ we ’re all in for a black 
time on this black ribber.” 

“Henry,” remarked Professor Ditson, 
acridly, “kindly close your mouth tightly and 
breathe through your nose for the next two 
hours. Your conversation is inconsequen¬ 
tial.” 

“Yassah, yassah,” responded Hen, meekly, 
and the montaria sped along through inky 
shadows and the silver reaches of the new 
river in silence. 

About midnight the forest became so dense 
that it was impossible to follow the channel 
safely, and the professor ordered the boat to 
be anchored for the night. Usually it was 


DEATH RIVER 85 

possible to make a landing and camp on 
shore, but to-night in the thick blackness of 
the shadowed bank, it was impossible to see 
anything. Accordingly, the party, swathed in 
mosquito-netting, slept as best they could in 
the montaria itself. 

It was at the gray hour before dawn, when 
men sleep soundest, that Jud was awakened 
by hearing a heavy thud against the side of 
the boat close to his head. It was repeated, 
and in the half-light the old man sat up. 
Once again came the heavy thud, and then, 
seemingly suspended in the air above the side 
of the boat close to his head, hung a head of 
horror. Slowly it thrust itself higher and 
higher, until, towering over the side of the 
boat, showed the fixed gleaming eyes and the 
darting forked tongue of a monstrous serpent. 
Paralyzed for a moment by his horror for all 
snake-kind, the old man could not move, and 
held his breath until the blood drummed in 
his ears. Only when the hideous head curved 
downward toward Joe did Jud recover con¬ 
trol of himself. His prisoned voice came out 
then with a yell like a steam-siren, and he 


86 


THE INCA EMERALD 


fumbled under his left armpit for the auto¬ 
matic revolver which he wore in the wilder¬ 
ness, night and day, strapped there in a water¬ 
proof case. 

“Sucuruju! Sucuruju! Sucuruju!” shouted 
Pinto, aroused by Jud’s yell. “The Spirit of 
the River is upon us!” And he grasped his 
machete just as Jud loosened his revolver. 

Quick as they were, the huge anaconda, 
whose family includes the largest water-snakes 
of the world, was even quicker. With a 
quick dart of its head, it fixed its long curved 
teeth in the shoulder of the sleeping boy, and 
in an instant, some twenty feet of glistening 
coils glided over the side of the boat. The 
scales of the monster shone like burnished 
steel, and it was of enormous girth in the 
middle, tapering of! at either end. Jud 
dared not shoot at the creature’s head for 
fear of wounding Joe, but sent bullets as 
fast as he could pull the trigger into the 
great girth, which tipped the heavy boat over 
until the water nearly touched the gunwale. 
Pinto slashed with all his might with his 
machete at the back of the great snake, but it 


y 


DEATH RIVER 87 

was like attempting to cut through steel-stud¬ 
ded leather. In spite of the attack, the coils 
of the great serpent moved toward the boy, 
who, without a sound, struggled to release his 
shoulder from the terrible grip of the curved 
teeth. The anaconda, the sucuruju of the na¬ 
tives, rarely ever attacks a man; but when it 
does, it is with difficulty driven away. This 
one, in spite of steel and bullets, persisted in 
its attempt to engulf the body of the struggling 
boy in its coils, solid masses of muscle power¬ 
ful enough to break every bone in Joe’s body. 

It was Hen Pine who finally saved the boy’s 
life. Awakened by the sound of the shots and 
the shouts of Jud and Pinto, he reached Joe 
just as one of the fatal coils was half around 
him. With his bare hands he caught hold 
of both of the fierce jaws and with one tre¬ 
mendous wrench of his vast arms literally tore 
them apart. Released from their death grip, 
Joe rolled to one side, out of danger. The 
great snake hissed fiercely, and its deadly, lid¬ 
less eyes glared into those of the man. Slowly, 
with straining, knotted muscles, Hen 
wrenched the grim jaws farther and farther 


THE INCA EMERALD 


apart. Then bracing his vast forearms, he 
bowed his back in one tremendous effort that, 
in spite of the steel-wire muscles of the great 
serpent, bent its deadly jaws backward and 
tore them down the sides, ripping the tough, 
shimmering skin like so much paper. Slowly, 
with a wrench and a shudder, the great water- 
boa acknowledged defeat, and its vast body 
pierced, slashed, and torn, reluctantly slid over 
the side of the boat. 

As Hen released his grip of the torn jaws, 
the form of the giant serpent showed mir¬ 
rored for an instant against the moonlit water 
and then disappeared in the inky depths be¬ 
low. Joe’s thick flannel shirt had saved his 
arm from any serious injury, but Professor 
Ditson washed out the gashes made by the 
sharp curved teeth with permanganate of pot¬ 
ash, for the teeth of the boas and pythons, 
although not venomous, may bring on blood- 
poisoning, like the teeth of any wild animal. 
Jud was far more shaken by the adventure 
than Joe, who was as impassive as ever. 

“Snakes, snakes, snakes!” he complained. 
“They live in the springs and pop up beside 


DEATH RIVER 


89 

the paths and drop on you out of trees. Now 
they ’re beginnin’ to creep out of the water to 
kill us off in our sleep. What a country!” 

“It’s the abundance of reptile life which 
makes South America so interesting and at¬ 
tractive,” returned Professor Ditson, severely. 

It was Pinto who prevented the inevitable 
and heated discussion between the elders of 
the party. 

“Down where I come from,” he said, “lives 
a big water-snake many times larger than this 
one, called the Guardian of the River. He at 
least seventy-five feet long. We feed him 
goats every week. My grandfather and his 
grandfather’s grandfather knew him. Once,” 
went on Pinto, “I found him coiled up beside 
the river in such a big heap that I could n’t see 
over the top of the coils.” 

“I don’t know which is the worse,” mur¬ 
mured Jud to Will, “seein’ the snakes which 
are or hearin’ about the snakes which ain't. 
Between the two, I’m gettin’ all wore out.” 

Then Pinto went back again to his predic¬ 
tions about the river they were on. 

“This river,” he said, “ is not called the 


THE INCA EMERALD 


90 

River of Death for nothing. The old men of 
my tribe say that always dangers come here 
by threes. One is passed, but two more are 
yet to come. Never, Master, should we have 
entered this river by night.” 

“Yes,” chimed in Hen, “when I heered that 
ol’ witch-owl I says to myself, ‘Hen Pine, 
there ’ll be somethin’ bad a-doin’ soon.’ ” 

“You talk like a couple of superstitious old 
women,” returned Professor Ditson, irritably. 

“You wait,” replied the Indian, stubbornly; 
“two more evils yet to come.” 

Pinto’s prophecy was partly fulfilled with 
startling suddenness. The party had finished 
breakfast, and the montaria was anchored in 
a smooth, muddy lagoon which led from the 
river back some distance into the forest. 
While Will and Hen fished from the bow of 
the boat the rest of the party curled them¬ 
selves up under the shade of the overhanging 
trees to make up their lost sleep. At first, 
the fish bit well and the two caught a num¬ 
ber which looked much like the black bass of 
northern waters. A minute later, a school 
of fresh-water flying-fish broke water near 


DEATH RIVER 


9 i 


them and flashed through the air for a full 
twenty yards, like a flight of gleaming birds. 

As the sun burned up the morning mist, it 
changed from a sullen red to a dazzling gold 
and at last to a molten white, and the two 
fishermen nodded over their poles as little 
waves of heat ran across the still water and 
seemed to weigh down their eyelids like 
swathings of soft wool. The prow of the 
boat swung lazily back and forth in the slow 
current which set in from the main river. 
Suddenly the dark water around the boat was 
muddied and discolored, as if something had 
stirred up the bottom ten feet below. Then 
up through the clouded water drifted a vast, 
spectral, grayish-white shape. Nearer and 
nearer to the suface it came, while Hen and 
Will dozed over their poles. Will sat direct¬ 
ly in the bow, and his body, sagging with 
sleep, leaned slightly over the gunwale. 

(Suddenly the surface of the water was 
broken by a tremendous splash, and out from 
its depth shot half the body of a fish 
nearly ten feet in length. Its color was the 
gray-white of the ooze at the bottom of the 


THE INCA EMERALD 


92 

stream in which it had lain hidden until at¬ 
tracted to the surface by the shadow of the 
montaria drifting above him. Will awakened 
at the hoarse shout from Hen just in time to 
see yawning in front of him a mouth more 
enormous than he believed any created thing 
possessed outside of the whale family. It 
was a full five feet between the yawning jaws, 
which were circled by a set of small sharp 
teeth. Even as he sprang back, the monster 
lunged forward right across the edge of the 
boat and the jaws snapped shut. 

Will rolled to one side in an effort to escape 
the menancing depths, and although he man¬ 
aged to save his head and body from the maw 
of the great fish, yet the jaws closed firmly on 
both his extended arms, engulfing them clear 
to the shoulder. The little teeth, tiny in com¬ 
parison with the size of the jaws in which they 
were set, hardly more than penetrated the 
sleeves of his flannel shirt and pricked the 
skin below, but as the monster lurched back¬ 
ward toward the water its great weight drew 
the boy irresistibly toward the edge of the 
boat, although he dug his feet into the thwarts 


DEATH RIVER 


93 

and twined them around the seat on which 
he had been sitting. Once in the river, the 
fatal jaws would open again, and he felt that 
he would be swallowed as easily as a pike 
would take in a minnow. 

Even as he was dragged forward to what 
seemed certain death, Will did not fail to rec¬ 
ognize a familiar outline in the vast fish-face 
against which he was held. The small, deep- 
set eyes, the skin like oiled leather, long fila¬ 
ments extending from the side of the jaw, and 
the enormous round head were nothing more 
than that of the catfish or bullhead which he 
used to catch at night behind the mill-dam in 
Cornwall, enlarged a thousand times . , 

Although the monster, in spite of its 
unwieldy size, had sprung forth, gripped its 
intended prey, and started back for the water 
in a flash, yet Hen Pine was even quicker. 
In spite of his size, there was no one in the 
party quicker in an emergency than the giant 
negro. Even as he sprang to his feet he dis¬ 
engaged the huge steel machete which always 
dangled from his belt. Hen’s blade, which 
he used as a bush-hook and a weapon, was 


94 


THE INCA EMERALD 


half again as heavy as the ordinary machete, 
and he always kept it ground to a razor edge. 
He reached the bow just as the great, gray, 
glistening body slipped back over the gun¬ 
wale, dragging Will irresistibly with it. 
Swinging the broad heavy blade over his 
head, with every ounce of effort in his brawny 
body, Hen, brought the keen edge down 
slantwise across the gray back of the river- 
monster, which tapered absurdly small 
in comparison with the vast spread of the gap¬ 
ing jaws. It was such a blow as Richard the 
Lion-hearted might have struck; and just as 
his historic battle-sword would shear through 
triple steel plate and flesh and bone, so that 
day the machete of Hen Pine, unsung in song 
or story, cut through the smooth gray skin, the 
solid flesh beneath, and whizzed straight on 
through the cartilaginous joints of the great 
fish’s spine, nor ever stopped until it had-sunk 
deep into the wood of the high gunwale of the 
boat itself. With a gasping sigh, the mon¬ 
ster’s head rolled off the edge of the boat and 
slowly sank through the dark water, leaving 
the long, severed trunk floating on the surface. 


DEATH RIVER 


95 

Reaching out, the negro caught the latter by 
one of the back fins and secured it with a 
quick twist of a near-by rope. 

“That’s the biggest piraiba I ever see,” he 
announced. “They ’re fine to eat, an’ turn 
about is fair play. Ol’ piraiba try to eat you; 
now you eat him.” And while Will sat back 
on the seat, sick and faint from his narrow 
escape, Hen proceeded to haul the black trunk 
aboard and carve steaks of the white, firm-set 
flesh from it. 

“Every year along the Madeira River this 
fish tip over canoes and swallow Indians. 
They’s more afraid of it,” Hen said, “than 
they is of alligators or anacondas.” 

When Hen woke up the rest of the party 
and told them of the near-tragedy Pinto 
croaked like a raven. 

“Sucuruju one, piraiba two; but three is yet 
to come,” he finished despondingly. The 
next two days, however, seemed to indicate 
that the River had exhausted its malice against 
the travelers. The party paddled through a 
panorama of sights and sounds new to the 
Northerners, and at night camped safely on 


96 THE INCA EMERALD 

high, dry places on the banks. On the morn¬ 
ing of the third day the whole party started 
down the river before daylight and watched 
the dawn of a tropical day, a miracle even 
more beautiful than the sunrises of the North. 
One moment there was perfect blackness; 
then a faint light showed in the east; and 
suddenly, without the slow changes of 
Northern skies, the whole east turned a lovely 
azure blue, against which showed a film and 
fretwork of white clouds, like wisps of snowy 
lace. 

Just as the sun came up they passed a tall 
and towering conical rock which shot up three 
hundred feet among the trees and termin¬ 
ated in what looked like a hollowed summit. 
Pinto told them that this was Treasure 
Rock, and that nearly half a thousand years 
ago the Spaniards, in the days when they were 
the cruel conquerors of the New World, had 
explored this river. From the ancestors of 
Pinto’s nation and from many another lesser 
Indian tribe they had carried off a great trea¬ 
sure of gold and emeralds and diamonds. 


DEATH RIVER 97 

Not satisfied with these, they had tried to en¬ 
slave the Indians and make them hunt for 
more. Finally, in desperation the tribes 
united, stormed* their persecutors’ camp, 
killed some, and forced the rest to flee down 
the river in canoes. When the Spaniards 
reached the rock, they landed, and, driving 
iron spikes at intervals up its steep side, man¬ 
aged to clamber up to the very crest and haul 
their treasure and stores of water and pro¬ 
visions after them by ropes made of lianas. 
There, safe from the arrows of their pursuers 
in the hollow top, they stood siege until the 
winter rains began. Then, despairing of tak¬ 
ing the fortress, the Indians returned to their 
villages; whereupon the Spaniards clambered 
down, the last man breaking off the iron spikes 
as he came, and escaped to the Spanish settle¬ 
ments. Behind them, in the inaccessible bowl 
on the tip-top of the rock, they left their trea¬ 
sure-chest, expecting to return with the rein¬ 
forcements and rescue it. The years went by 
and the Spaniards came not again to Black 
River, but generation after generation of In- 


98 THE INCA EMERALD 

dians handed down the legend of Treasure 
Rock, with the iron-bound chest on its top, 
awaiting him who can scale its height. 

Jud, a treasure-hunter by nature, was much 
impressed by Pinto’s story. 

“What do you think of takin’ a week off and 
lookin’ into this treasure business?” he sug¬ 
gested. “I ’ll undertake to get a rope over 
the top of this rock by a kite, or somethin’ of 
that sort, an’ then I know a young chap by the 
name of Adams who would climb up there 
an’ bring down a trunk full of gold an’ gems. 
What do you say?” 

“Pooh!” is what Professor Amandus Dit- 
son said, and the expedition proceeded in spite 
of Jud’s protests. 


CHAPTER V 


SHIPWRECK 

A BOUT the middle of the morning 
there sounded through the still air a 
distant boom, which grew louder until 
finally it became a crashing roar. Beyond 
a bend in the river stretched before them a 
long gorge. There the stream had narrowed, 
and, rushing across a ledge shaped like a 
horseshoe, foamed and roared and beat its 
way among the great boulders. The pad- 
dlers brought their craft into smooth water 
under an overhanging bank while they held a 
council of war. Professor Ditson had never 
been on the Rio Negros before, nor had Pinto 
followed it farther than Treasure Rock. For 
a long time the whole party carefully studied 
the distant rapids. 

“What do you think?” whispered Will to 
Joe. 


99 


IOO THE INCA EMERALD 

The Indian boy, who had paddled long 
journeys on the rivers and seas of the far 
Northwest, shook his head doubtfully. 

“Can do in a bark canoe,” he said at last; 
“but in this thing—I don’t know.” 

Pinto and Hen both feared the worst in re¬ 
gard to anything which had to do with Black 
River. It was Professor Ditson who finally 
made the decision. 

“‘It would take us weeks,” he said, “to cut a 
trail through the forests and portage this boat 
around. One must take some chances in life. 
There seems to be a channel through the very 
center of the horseshoe. Let’s go!” 

For the first time during the whole trip old 
Jud looked at his rival admiringly. 

“The old bird has some pep left, after all,” 
he whispered to Will. “I want to tell you, 
boy,” he went on, “that I’ve never seen worse 
rapids, an’ if we bring this canal-boat through, 
it ’ll be more good luck than good manage¬ 
ment.” 

Under Professor Ditson’s instructions, 
Pinto took the bow paddle, while Hen pad- 
died stern, with Will and Joe on one side and 


SHIPWRECK 


IOI 


Jud and the professor on the other. Then 
all the belongings of the party were shifted so 
as to ballast the unwieldy craft as well as pos¬ 
sible, and in another moment they shot out 
into the swift current. Faster and faster the 
trees and banks flashed by, like the screen of a 
motion picture. Not even a fleck of foam 
broke the glassy surface of the swirling cur¬ 
rent. With smooth, increasing speed, the 
river raced toward the rapids which roared 
and foamed ahead, while swaying wreaths of 
white mist, shot through with rainbow colors, 
floated above the welter of raging waters 
and the roar of the river rose to shout. Be¬ 
yond, a black horseshoe of rock stretched 
from one bank to the other in a half-circle, 
and in front of it sharp ridges and snags 
showed like black fangs slavered with the 
foam of the river’s madness. 

In another second the boat shot into the very 
grip of these jaws of death. Standing with 
his lithe, copper-colored body etched against 
the foam of the rapids, the Mundurucu held 
the lives of every one of the party in his slim, 
powerful hands. Accustomed from boyhood 


ioa THE INCA EMERALD 

to the handling of the river-boats of his tribe 
through the most dangerous of waters, he 
stood that day like the leader of an orchestra, 
directing every movement of those behind 
him, with his paddle for a baton. Only a 
crew of the most skilled paddlers had a chance 
in that wild water; and such a crew was obe¬ 
dient to the Indian. In the stern, the vast 
strength of the giant negro swung the mon- 
taria into the course which the bow paddler 
indicated by his motions, while the other four, 
watching his every movement, were quick to 
paddle or to back on their respective sides. 
At times, as an unexpected rock jutted up be¬ 
fore him in the foam, the Indian would plunge 
his paddle slantwise against the current and 
would hold the boat there for a second, until 
the paddlers could swing it, as on a fulcrum, 
out of danger. Once the craft was swept with 
tremendous force directly at an immense boul¬ 
der, against which the water surged and broke. 

To Jud and the boys it seemed as if Pinto 
had suddenly lost his control of the montaria, 
for, instead of trying to swing out of the grip 
of the currents that rushed upon the rock, he 


SHIPWRECK 


103 


steered directly at its face. The Mundurucu, 
however, knew his business. Even as Jud 
tensed his muscles for the crash, the rebound 
and undertow of the waters, hurled back from 
the face of the rock, caught the boat and 
whirled it safely to one side of the boulder. 
In and out among the reefs and fangs of rock 
the Mundurucu threaded the boat so deftly, 
and so well did his crew behind him respond, 
that in all that tumult of dashing waves the 
heavy craft shipped no water outside of the 
flying spray. 

In another minute they were clear of the 
outlying reefs and ledges and speeding to¬ 
ward the single opening in the black jaw of 
rock that lay ahead of them. Here it was 
that, through no fault of their steersman, the 
great mishap of the day overtook them. Just 
beyond the gap in the rock was a little fall, 
not five feet high, hidden by the spray. As 
Pinto passed through the narrow opening he 
swung the bow of the boat diagonally so as to 
catch the smoother current toward the right- 
hand bank of the river, which at this point 
jutted far out into the rapids. As he 


104 THE INCA EMERALD 

swerved, the long montaria shot through the 
air over the fall. The Indian tried to 
straighten his course, but it was too late. In 
an instant the boat had struck at an angle 
the rushing water beyond, with a force that 
nearly drove it below the surface. Before it 
could right itself, the rush of the current 
from behind struck it broadside, and in an¬ 
other second the montaria, half-filled with 
the water which it had shipped, capsized, 
and its crew were struggling in the current. 

It was Hen Pine who reached the river 
first. When he saw that the boat was certain 
to upset he realized that his only chance for 
life was to reach smooth water. Even while 
the montaria was still in mid-air he sprang 
far out toward the bank, where a stretch of 
unbroken current set in toward a tiny cape, 
beyond which it doubled back into a chaos of 
tossing, foaming water where not even the 
strongest swimmer would have a chance for 
life. Hen swam with every atom of his tre¬ 
mendous strength, in order to reach that point 
before he was swept into the rapids beyond. 
His bare black arms and vast shoulders, knot- 


SHIPWRECK 


105 

ted and ridged with muscle, thrashed through 
the water with the thrust of a propeller-blade 
as he swam the river-crawl which he had 
learned from Indian swimmers. For an in¬ 
stant it seemed as if he would lose, for when 
nearly abreast of the little cape several feet 
of racing current still lay between him and 
safety. Sinking his head far under the water, 
he put every ounce of strength into three 
strokes, the last of which shot him just near 
enough to the bank to grip a tough liana which 
dangled like a rope from an overhanging tree- 
top. Pinto, who was next, although no mean 
swimmer, would never have made the full 
distance, yet managed to grasp one of Hen’s 
brawny legs, which stretched far out into the 
current. 

“You hold on,” he muttered to the great 
negro; “we make a monkey-bridge and save 
them all.” 

Hen only nodded his head and took a 
double turn of the lianas around each arm. 
Professor Ditson was the next one to win 
safety, for the two boys were staying by Jud, 
who was a most indifferent swimmer. As the 


io6 THE INCA EMERALD 


professor’s long, thin legs dangled out into the 
current like a pair of tongs, with a desperate 
stroke Will caught one of his ankles, and was 
gripped in turn by Joe, and Jud locked both 
of his arms around the latter’s knees, while the 
swift river tossed his gray hair and beard 
along its surface. As the full force of the cur¬ 
rent caught this human chain it stretched and 
sagged ominously. Then each link tightened 
up and prepared to hold as long as flesh and 
blood could stand the strain. 

“Go ahead, Jud!” gasped Will over his 
shoulder; “pull yourself along until you get 
to shore; then Joe will follow, and then I. 
Only hurry—the professor won’t be able to 
hold on much longer, nor Hen to stand the 
strain.” 

“Don’t hurry on my account,” sounded the 
precise voice of Professor Ditson above the 
roar of the waters. “I can hold on as long as 
any one.” And as he spoke Will felt his 
gaunt body stiffen until it seemed all steel and 
whipcord. 

“Same here!” bellowed Hen, his magnifi¬ 
cent body stretched out through the water as 


SHIPWRECK 


107 

if on a rack. “Take your time and come 
along careful.” 

In another minute the old trapper had 
pulled his way hand over hand along the liv¬ 
ing bridge until he too had a grip on one of 
the dangling lianas. He was followed by 
link after link of the human chain until they 
were all safe at the edge of the bank. Hen 
was the first to scramble up and give the others 
a helping hand, and a moment later all six of 
the treasure-seekers stood safe on the high 
ridge of the little promontory and sadly 
watched the boat which had borne them so 
well smash into a mass of floating, battered 
planks among the rocks and disappear down 
the current. Along with it went their guns, 
their ammunition, and their supplies. 

Jud alone retained the automatic revolver 
which he always wore, with a couple of clips 
holding sixteen cartridges, besides the eight 
in the cylinder. Hen also could not be termed 
weaponless, for he still wore his machete; 
while Will had a belt-ax, Joe a light hatchet, 
and Professor Ditson a sheath-knife. Besides 
these, the Indian had his bamboo tinder-box 


io8 THE INCA EMERALD 


and flint and steel, which he always wore in 
his belt. These and the jack-knives and a 
few miscellaneous articles which they hap¬ 
pened to have in their pockets or fastened to 
their belts comprised the whole equipment of 
the party. 

Before them stretched a hundred miles of 
uncharted jungle, infested by dangerous beasts 
and wandering cannibal tribes, through which 
they must pass to reach the old Slave Trail. 
Half that distance behind them was the Am¬ 
azon. If once they could find their way back 
to that great river and camp on its banks, 
sooner or later a boat would go by which 
would take them back to Manaos. This, how¬ 
ever, might mean weeks of delay and perhaps 
the abandonment of the whole trip. As they 
stood upon a white sand-bank far enough back 
from the river so that the roar of the rapids no 
longer deafened them, it was Pinto who spoke 
first. 

“Master,” he said to Professor Ditson, “it 
is no time for council. Let us have fire and 
food first. A man thinks more wisely with 
his head when his stomach is warm and full.” 


SHIPWRECK 


109 


“I ’ll say the man is right,” said Jud, shiv¬ 
ering a little in his wet clothes as the cool¬ 
ness of the approaching night began to be 
felt through the forest; “but where is that 
same fire and food goin’ to come from?” 

Pinto’s answer was to scrape shavings from 
the midrib of a dry palm-leaf. When he had 
a little pile on the white sand in front of him, 
he opened the same kind of tinder-box that 
our ancestors used to carry less than a cen¬ 
tury and a half ago. Taking out from this an 
old file and a bit of black flint, with a quick 
glancing blow he sent half a dozen sparks 
against a dry strip of feltlike substance found 
only in the nests of certain kinds of ants. In a 
minute a deep glow showed from the end of 
this tinder, and, placing it under the pile of 
shavings, Pinto blew until the whole heap was 
in a light blaze. Hastily piling dry wood on 
top of this, he left to the others the task of 
keeping the fire going and, followed by Will, 
hurried through the jungle toward the tower¬ 
ing fronds of a peach-palm, which showed 
above the other trees. Twisting together 
two or three lianas, the Indian made from 


IIO THE INCA EMERALD 


them a light, strong belt. This he slipped 
around himself and the tree, and, gripping it 
in both hands, began to walk up the rough 
trunk, leaning against this girdle and pushing 
it up with each step, until, sixty feet from the 
ground, he came to where the fruit of the tree 
was clustered at its top. It grew in a group 
of six, each one looking like a gigantic, rosy 
peach a foot in diameter. In a moment they 
all came whizzing to the ground, and the two 
staggered back to the fire with the party’s sup¬ 
per on their backs. Stripping off the thick 
husk, Pinto exposed a soft kernel which, when 
roasted on the coals, tasted like a delicious 
mixture of cheese and chestnuts. 

When at last all the members of the party 
were full-fed and dry, the wisdom of Pinto’s 
counsel was evident. Every one was an op¬ 
timist; and, after all, the best advice in life 
comes from optimists. Even Pinto and Hen 
felt that, now that they had lived through the 
third misfortune, they need expect no further 
ill luck from the river. 

“Forward or back—which!” was the way 
Professor Ditson put the question. 


SHIPWRECK 


iii 


“Forward!” voted Will. 

“Forward!” grunted Joe. 

Jud seemed less positive. 

“I sure would hate to go back,” he said, 
“after old Jim Donegan had grub-staked us, 
an’ tell the old man that, while we ’re good 
pearlers, we ’re a total loss when it comes to 
emeralds. Yet,” he went on judicially, 
“there’s a hundred miles of unexplored forests 
between us and the perfesser’s trail, if there is 
any such thing. We’ve lost our guns; we’ve 
no provisions; we ’re likely to run across bands 
of roving cannibals; lastly, it may take us 
months to cut our way through this jungle. 
Therefore I vote—forward!” 

“That’s the stuff, Jud!” exclaimed Will, 
much relieved. 

“Oh, I don’t believe in takin’ any chances,” 
returned the old man, who had never 
done anything else all his life. “My idea 
is to always look at the dangers—an’ then go 
ahead.” 

“What about me?” objected Hen. “I ain’t 
a-goin’ to cut no hundred miles of trail 
through this here jungle for nobody.” 


112 THE INCA EMERALD 

The answer came, sudden and unexpected, 
from the forests. 

“John cut wood! John cut wood! John 
cut wood!” called some one, clearly. It was 
only a spotted goatsucker, a bird belonging to 
the same family as our northern whip-poor- 
will, but Hen was much amused. 

“You hear what the bird say, you John 
Pinto. Get busy and cut wood,” he laughed, 
slapping his friend mightily on the back. 

“All right,” said the Indian, smiling, “John 
will cut wood. Master,” he said to Profes¬ 
sor Ditson, “if all will help, I can make a 
montaria in less than a week, better than the 
one we lost. Then we not have to cut our way 
through jungle.” 

“Pinto,” said Professor Ditson, solemnly, 
for once dropping into slang, “the sense of 
this meeting is—that you go to it.” 

That night they followed the bank until 
they found a place where it curved upward 
into a high, dry bluff. There, on soft white 
sand above the mosquito-belt, they slept the 
sleep of exhaustion. It was after midnight 
when Will, who was sleeping between Pro- 


SHIPWRECK 


“3 


fessor Ditson and Jud, suddenly awoke with 
a start. Something had sniffed at his face. 

Without moving, he opened his eyes and 
looked directly into a pair that flamed green 
through the darkness. In the half-light of 
the setting moon he saw, standing almost over 
him, a heavily built animal as big as a small 
lion. Yet the short, upcurved tail and the 
rosettes of black against the gold of his skin 
showed the visitor to be none other than that 
terror of the jungle, the great jaguar, which 
in pioneer days used to come as far north as 
Arkansas and is infinitely more to be feared 
than the panthers which our forefathers 
dreaded so. This one had none of the lithe 
grace of the cougars which Will had met 
during the quest of the Blue Pearl, but gave 
him the same impression of stern tremendous 
strength and girth that a lion possesses. 

All of these details came to Will the next 
day. At that moment, as he saw the great 
round head of this king of the South Ameri¬ 
can forest within a foot of his own, he was 
probably the worst scared boy on the South 
American continent. Will knew that a jag- 


1*4 THE INCA EMERALD 

uar was able to drag a full-grown ox over a 
mile, and that this one could seize him by the 
throat, flirt his body over one shoulder, and 
disappear in the jungle almost before he could 
cry out. The great beast seemed, however, 
to be only mildly interested in him. Prob¬ 
ably he had fed earlier in the evening. 

Even as Will stared aghast into the gleam¬ 
ing eyes of the great cat, he saw, out of the 
corner of his eye, Jud’s right hand stealing 
toward his left shoulder. The old trapper, as 
usual, was wide awake when any danger 
threatened. Before, however, he had time to 
reach his automatic, Professor Ditson, equally 
watchful from his side, suddenly clapped 
his hands together sharply, close to the 
jaguar’s pricked-up ears. The effect was in¬ 
stantaneous. With a growl of alarm, the great 
beast sprang backward and disappeared like 
a shadow into the forest. 

The professor sat up. 

“That’s the way to handle jaguars,” he re¬ 
marked. “He ’ll not come back. If you had 
shot him,” he continued severely to Jud, who 
held his cocked revolver in one hand, “he 


SHIPWRECK 


n$ 

would have killed the boy and both of us be¬ 
fore he died himself.” And the professor lay 
down again to resume his interrupted slum¬ 
bers. 

It was this occurrence which started a dis¬ 
cussion the next morning in regard to 
weapons, offensive and defensive. 

“I ’low,” said Hen Pine, making his heavy 
machete swing through the air as he whirled 
it around his head, “that I can stop anything I 
meet with this ’ere toothpick of mine.” 

“Hen,” remarked Jud, impressively, “do 
you see that round thing hangin’ against the 
sky in the big tree about fifty yards away?” 

“Yassah, yassah,” responded Hen, “that’s a 
monkey-pot full of Brazil-nuts.” 

“Well, boy,” returned the old trapper, 
“just keep your eye on it.” 

As he spoke he raised his automatic to the 
level of his hip, shooting without sighting, 
with that strange sixth sense of position which 
some of the great revolver-shots of a past 
generation used to acquire. There was a 
flash, a sharp spat, and the case of nuts about 
twice the size of a man’s fist came whizzing to 


n 6 THE INCA EMERALD 

the ground. Hen stared at the old trapper 
with his mouth open. 

“You is sure the hittenest shooter ever I 
see,” he said at last. 

Joe said nothing, but, drawing from his 
belt the keen little hatchet which he always 
carried, poised himself with his left foot for¬ 
ward, and, whirling the little weapon over his 
head, sent it hurtling through the air toward 
the same Brazil-nut tree. The little ax buzzed 
like a bee and, describing a high curve, bur¬ 
ied itself clear to the head in the soft bark. 
Picking up a couple of heavy round stones, 
Will put himself into a pitching position and 
sent one whizzing in a low straight peg which 
hardly rose at all and which struck the tree 
close to Joe’s hatchet with a smack which 
would have meant a broken bone for any man 
or beast that it struck; for, as Joe had found 
out when the two were pursued by Scar Daw¬ 
son’s gang, Will was a natural-born stone- 
thrower, with deadly speed and accuracy. 

It was Professor Ditson, however, who gave 
what was perhaps the most spectacular ex¬ 
hibition of all. Standing before them, lean 


SHIPWRECK 


1 17 

and gaunt, he suddenly reached to his belt 
and drew out a keen, bone-handled, double- 
edged sheath-knife. Poising this flat on the 
palm of his hand, he threw it, with a quick 
jerk, with much the same motion of a cricket- 
bowler. The keen weapon hissed through 
the air like an arrow, and was found sunk 
nearly to the hilt in the bark between the mark 
of Will’s stone and the head of Joe’s hatchet. 

“When I was a very young man,” the pro¬ 
fessor explained, embarrassed, “I attained a 
certain amount of proficiency with the bowie- 
knife.” 

“I ’ll say you did!” exclaimed Jud, as he 
worked the knife out of the tough bark. “Any 
cannibal that comes within fifty yards of this 
party is liable to be chopped an’ stabbed an* 
broken an’ shot—to say nothin’ of Hen’s, 
machete at close quarters.” 

Pinto had watched these various perfor¬ 
mances in silence. 

“This evening,” he said at last, “I show 
you a gun that kills without any noise.” 

Borrowing Joe’s hatchet, he disappeared 
into the woods, to come back half an hour 


ii8 THE INCA EMERALD 


later with a nine-foot stick of some hard, 
hollow, light wood about an inch in diameter, 
straight as an arrow, and with a center of soft 
pith. Laying this down on a hard stump, 
Pinto, with the utmost care, split the whole 
length into halves. Then, fumbling in his 
belt he pulled from it one of the sharp teeth 
of the paca, that curious reddish rodent 
which is half-way in size and appearance be¬ 
tween a hog and a hare and which is equally 
at home on land and in water, and whose two- 
inch cutting-teeth are among the favorite 
ready-made tools of all South American In¬ 
dians. With one of these Pinto carefully hol¬ 
lowed out each section of the stick, smoothing 
and polishing the concave surface until it was 
like glass. Then, fitting the two halves to¬ 
gether, he wound them spirally with a long 
strip of tape which he made from the tough, 
supple wood of a climbing palm, waxed with 
the black wax of the stingless bees. When it 
was finished he had a light, hollow tube about 
nine feet long. At one end, which he tapered 
slightly, he fixed, upright, the tiny tooth of a 
mouse, which he pressed down until only a 


SHIPWRECK 


1 19 

fleck of shining ivory showed as a sight above 
the black surface of the tube. At the other 
end he fitted in a cup-shaped mouthpiece, 
chiseled out of a bit of light, seasoned wood. 

By noon it was finished, and Jud and the 
boys saw for the first time the deadly blow- 
gun of the Mundurucu Indians. For arrows, 
Pinto cut tiny strips from the flinty leaf-stalks 
of palm-leaves. These he scraped until the 
end of each was as sharp as a needle. Then 
he feathered them with little oval masses of 
silk from the seed-vessels of silk-cotton trees, 
whose silk is much fluffier and only about half 
the weight of ordinary cotton. In a short 
time he had made a couple of dozen of these 
arrows, each one of which fitted exactly to the 
bore of the blow-gun, and also fashioned for 
himself a quiver of plaited grasses, which he 
wore suspended from his shoulder with a strip 
of the palm tape. 

Late in the afternoon he made another trip 
into the forest, returning with a mass of bark 
scraped from a tree called by the Indians ma- 
vacure, but which the white settlers in South 
America have named the poison tree. This 


120 THE INCA EMERALD 

bark he wet in the river, and then pounded it 
between two stones into a mass of yellowish 
fibers, which he placed in a funnel made of a 
plantain-leaf. Under this he set one of the 
aluminum cups which each of the party car¬ 
ried fastened to his belt. This done, he 
poured in cold water and let the mass drip 
until the cup was full of a yellow liquid, 
which he heated over a slow fire. When it 
thickened he poured in some of the milky juice 
of another near-by tree, which turned the mix¬ 
ture black. When it had boiled down to a 
thick gummy mass, Pinto wrapped it up care¬ 
fully in a palm-leaf, after first dipping every 
one of his arrows into the black compound. 

So ended the making of the famous urari 
arrow-poison, which few white men indeed 
have ever seen brewed. When it was safely 
put away, Pinto carefully fitted one of the tiny 
arrows into the mouthpiece and raised the 
blow-gun to his mouth, holding it with both 
hands touching each other just beyond the 
mouthpiece, instead of extending his left arm, 
as a white man would hold a gun. Even as 
he raised the long tube, there came a crash- 


SHIPWRECK 


I 21 


ing through the near-by trees, and the party 
looked up to see a strange sight. Rushing 
along the branches came a pale greenish-gray 
lizard, marked on the sides with black bars 
and fully six feet in length. Along its back 
ran a crest of erect spines. Even as its long 
compressed tail whisked through the foilage > 
a reddish animal, which resembled a lanky 
raccoon, sprang after it like a squirrel, follow¬ 
ing hard on its trail. 

“It’s an’ ol’ coati chasin’ a big iguana,” 
muttered Hen, as the pair went by. “They ’re 
both mighty fine eatin’.” 

At first, the pursued and the pursuer seemed 
equally matched in speed. Little by little, 
the rapid bounds of the mammal overtook 
the swift glides of the reptile, and in a tree- 
top some fifty yards away the iguana turned 
at bay. In spite of its size and the threatening, 
horrible appearance of its uplifted spines, the 
coati made short work of it, worrying it like 
a dog, and finally breaking its spine. Even 
as its long bulk hung lifeless from the power¬ 
ful jaws of the animal, Pinto drew a deep 
breath and, sighting his long tube steadily to- 


122 THE INCA EMERALD 

ward the distant animal, drove his breath 
through the mouth-piece with all his force. 
There followed a startling pop, and a white 
speck flashed through the air toward the coati. 
A second later, the latter, still holding the dead 
iguana, gave a spring as if struck by some¬ 
thing, and started off again through the tree- 
tops, the great body of the dead lizard trail¬ 
ing behind. Suddenly the coati began to go 
slower and slower and then stopped short. Its 
head drooped. First one paw and then an¬ 
other relaxed, until, with a thud, the coati and 
iguana struck the ground together both stone- 
dead. The boys rushed over and found 
Pinto’s tiny, deadly arrow embedded deep in 
the coati’s side. Less than a minute had passed 
since it had been struck, but the deadly urari 
had done its work. Fortunately, this poison 
does not impair the food value of game, and 
later on, over a bed of coals, Hen made good 
his words about their eating qualities. The 
coati tasted like roast ’possum, while the flesh 
of the giant lizard was as white and tender as 
chicken. 

“I feel as if I was eatin’ a dragon,” grum- 




SHIPWRECK 


123 


bled Jud, coming bac)k for a third, helping. 

Followed a week of hard work for all. 
Under Pinto’s directions, taking turns with 
Jud’s ax, they cut down a yellow stone- 
wood tree, which was almost as hard and 
heavy as its name. Out of the trunk they 
shaped a log some nineteen feet in length and 
three feet through, which, with infinite pains 
and with lianas for ropes, they dragged on 
rollers to the water’s edge. Then, with enor¬ 
mous labor, working by shifts with Joe’s 
hatchet, Jud’s ax, and Hen’s machete, they 
managed to hollow out the great log. At 
the end of the fourth day, Jud struck. 

“I ’ll work as hard as any man,” he said, 
“but I got to have meat. If I work much 
longer on palm-nuts I’m liable to go plumb 
nutty myself.” 

As the rest of the party felt the same crav¬ 
ing, Pinto and Jud were told off to hunt for 
the rest of that day. It was Jud who first 
came across game, a scant half-mile from 
camp, meeting there an animal which is one 
of the strangest still left on earth and which, 
along with the duck-bill of Australia and the 


124 THE INCA EMERALD 

great armadillo, really belongs to a past age, 
before man came to earth, but by some strange 
accident has survived to this day. 

In front of him, digging in a dry bank with 
enormous curved claws, was an animal over 
six feet in length and about two feet in height. 
It had great hairy legs, and a tremendous 
bushy tail, like a vast plume, curled over its 
back. Its head ended in a long, tapering, 
toothless snout, from which was thrust con¬ 
stantly a wormlike, flickering tongue, while 
a broad oblique stripe, half gray and half 
black, showed on either side. 

“There ain’t no such animal,” murmured 
Jud to himself, examining the stranger with 
awe. 

Pinto’s face shone with pleasure when he 
came up. 

“It giant ant-eater and very good to eat,” 
he remarked cheerfully. 

Upon seeing them, the great beast shuffled 
away, but was soon brought to bay, when it 
stood with its back against the bank, swinging 
its long snout back and forth and' making a 
little whining noise. Jud was about to step 


SHIPWRECK 


125 

in and kill it with a blow from his ax, but 
Pinto held him back. 

“No get in close to ant-bear,” he warned, 
pointing to the giant’s claws. “He rip you 
to pieces. You watch.” 

Stepping back, the Indian raised his blow- 
gun to his mouth. Again came the fatal pop, 
and the next second one of the tiny arrows 
was embedded like a thorn in the side of the 
monster’s snout. For a moment the great ant- 
eater tried to dislodge the tiny pointed shaft 
with his enormous claws. Then he stopped, 
stood motionless for a while, swayed from 
side to side, and sank dead without a sound or 
struggle. With the help of Jud’s ax and his 
own knife, the Indian soon quartered and 
dressed the great beast and an hour later 
the two staggered back to camp loaded down 
with a supply of meat which, when roasted, 
tasted much like tender pork. 

“Now,” said Jud, smacking his lips after 
a full meal, “bring on your work!” 


CHAPTER VI 


THE BLACK TIGER 

U NDER Pinto’s direction the hollow 
trunk was lifted up so that each end 
rested on a stump. Then a slow fire 
Was kindled under its whole length. Pinto 
tended this most carefully, so that the heat 
would spread evenly. Gradually, under the 
blaze, the green wood spread out. This was 
the most critical point in this forest boat¬ 
building, for if there were too much heat at 
any one point, a crack might start through the 
log and all the work of the week go for noth¬ 
ing. As the great log opened out, the In¬ 
dian moved constantly up and down its length, 
checking the blaze here and there with wet 
moss where the sides were spreading out too 
fast. At several different points he fitted in 
straddlers, with wedges made from stone- 
wood branches. By skilfully changing the 
pressure of these and varying the heat at dif- 
126 


THE BLACK TIGER 


127 


ferent points the hollowed log at last took 
on a graceful curve, with tapered turned-up 
ends. Green strips of stonewood were fitted 
in for gunwales, and seats and semicircular 
end-boards put in place. Then the long 
dugout was allowed to cool off gradually all 
through one night. As it contracted, it locked 
in place gunwales, seats and thwarts. An¬ 
other day was given to fashioning light 
paddles out of palm-wood; and then at last, 
one week after their shipwreck, these latter- 
day Argonauts were once more afloat upon 
Black River. 

There followed long days, in each of which 
three seasons were perfectly reproduced. 
The mornings had all the chill of early 
spring; by noon came the blinding heat of 
midsummer; and the nights, of the same 
length as the days, had the frosty tang of 
autumn. During the morning of each day 
they paddled, lying by at noon-time in cool, 
shaded lagoons where they slept or fished. 
At other times they would collect nuts and 
fruits on the shore, under the direction of 
Professor Ditson, or take turns in going with 


128 THE INCA EMERALD 


Pinto on short hunting-trips, during which 
all kinds of strange game would fall before 
his deadly blow-gun. 

It was Jud who went with him on the first 
of these hunts. As they came to the bank of 
one of the many streams that ran into the Black 
River, the old trapper caught sight of a 
strange animal on the bank which looked like 
a great guinea-pig about the size of a sheep. 
Its wet hide was all shining black in the sun¬ 
light, and even as Jud turned to ask the In¬ 
dian what it was, there sounded just behind 
him the fatal pop of the blow-gun, a venom¬ 
ous little arrow buzzed through the air, and 
a second later was sticking deep in the beast’s 
blunt muzzle. Like an enormous muskrat, 
the stranger scrambled to the edge of the 
stream, plunged in, and disappeared in the 
dark water. 

“That was a capybara,” Pinto informed 
Jud. 

“Well, you’ve lost him all right, whatever 
he was,” returned the latter. 

“Wait,” was all that Pinto would say. 

A few minutes later, the limp, dead body 


THE BLACK TIGER 


129 


of the capybara, the largest of all aquatic 
rodents floated to the surface. Jud was about 
to wade into the shallow water and secure 
it when he was stopped by the Mundurucu. 

“Never put your hand or foot into strange 
water,” he said. “You may lose ’em.” 

Without explaining himself, he cut a long 
pole and carefully towed the dead animal to 
shore. That night the whole party camped 
on a high, dry, sandy bluff where Pinto and 
Hen dressed the capybara and roasted parts 
of it on long green spits of ironwood. 

Will sampled the dank, dark meat cau¬ 
tiously. 

“Tastes like a woodchuck I once tried to 
eat,” he remarked, after one mouthful. “You 
can have my share.” And he went back to 
palm-nuts. 

From another trip, Pinto brought back a 
coaita, one of the spider-monkeys which had 
so affected Will’s appetite on the occasion of 
their first meal at Professor Ditson’s house. 
This one had a long, lank body covered with 
coarse black hair, while its spectral little face 
was set in a mass of white whiskers. 


130 


THE INCA EMERALD 


Will ate the rich, sweet meat shudderingly. 

‘‘It looks just like a little old man,” he 
protested. 

“But it tastes better,” observed the hard¬ 
ened Jud, passing his bark plate for another 
helping. 

It was Jud and Will who accompanied 
Pinto on the third and most eventful trip of 
all. The boat had been beached at the slope 
of a high bank; and, while the others dozed 
or slept, Pinto and his two companions started 
through the woods on their hunt for any game 
which might add some kind of meat to their 
menu. A hundred yards from the bank the 
jungle deepened and darkened. Everywhere 
the strangler-fig was killing straight, slim 
palms and towering silk-cotton and paradise- 
nut trees. At first, this assassin among the 
tree-folk runs up its victim’s trunk like a vine. 
As the years go by, it sends out shoots and stems 
around and around the tree it has chosen. 
These join and grow together, forming a vast 
hollow trunk, in the grip of which the other 
tree dies. Pools of black water showed here 
and there at the foot of the strangled trees, 


THE BLACK TIGER 


and something sinister seemed to hang over 
this stretch of jungle. 

“Feels kind of creepy here/’ Jud confided 
to Will. “Looks just the kind of a place for 
some of Hen’s haunts,” he went on. 

Even as he spoke, there sounded among the 
distant trees ominous grunting groans, and 
here and there among the shadows dark shapes 
could be seen moving about. The fierce 
moaning grew louder, mingled with a clicking 
noise like castanets. 

“Peccaries!” muttered Jud. “I’ve hunted 
the little ones down in Mexico. They were 
liable to bite a piece out of you as big as a 
tea-cup. I’m in favor of lettin’ these big 
fellows strictly alone.” 

“Quiet, quiet!” muttered the Indian, slip¬ 
ping behind a tree and motioning his compan¬ 
ions to do likewise. “They go by in a minute, 
and I take off the last one with my blow-gun.” 

Instead of doing this, however, the great 
herd spread out through the woods, grunting 
and groaning and clattering their sharp tusks. 
As they came closer and closer, each of the 
peccaries seemed nearly as large as the wild 


i 3 2 THE INCA EMERALD 

boar of European forests, while their lips and 
lower jaws were pure white. The Mundurucu 
showed signs of alarm. 

“Something has stirred them up,” he mut¬ 
tered. “If they see us, they charge. Better 
each one choose a tree.” 

Even as he spoke, the leading peccary, 
whose gleaming tusks thrust out like keen 
knives from each side of his white jowl, 
glimpsed the little party in the shadows. 
With a deep groan, he lowered his head and 
charged at full speed, his tusks clattering as 
he came, while the white foam showed like 
snow against the raised bristles of his back. 
The whole herd followed—a nightmare of 
fierce heads, gleaming red eyes, and clicking, 
dagger-like tusks. Against such a rush Jud’s 
automatic was as useless as Pinto’s blow-gun 
or Will’s throwing-stones. There was only 
one thing to do, and, with the utmost prompt¬ 
ness all three of the party did it. Jud went 
up the vinelike trunk of a small strangler-fig 
hand over hand, nor ever stopped until he 
was safe astride the branch of a stonewood 
tree, twenty feet from the ground. Pinto, 


THE BLACK TIGER 


133 


gripping the rough red bark of a cow tree, 
walked up it Indian fashion until he was 
safely seated in a crotch far above the ground. 
Will was not so fortunate. Near him was the 
smooth bark of an assai-palm. Twice he tried 
to climb it, and twice slipped back. Then, 
with every muscle tense, he dodged behind it 
and sprinted, as he had never run before, 
across a little opening to where a vast strang¬ 
ler-fig had swallowed a Brazil-nut tree in its 
octopus grip. The rush of the charging herd 
was hard on his heels as he reached the tree, 
and he had just time to swerve around its trunk 
and grip one of the vinelike tentacles which 
had not yet become a part of the solid shell 
of the strangler. Even as he swung himself 
from the ground, the bristling head of one 
bf the herd struck against his feet, and he 
kicked them aloft just in time to avoid 
the quick double slash of the sharp tusks that 
followed. 

Up and up he went, while the whole shell¬ 
like structure of the fig swayed and bent under 
his weight and dry dust from the dead nut 
tree powdered down upon him in showers. 


i 3 4 THE INCA EMERALD 

Finally he reached a safe stopping-place, 
where he could stand with both feet resting in 
a loop which the snakelike fig had made in 
one of its twisting turns around its victim. 

For a few minutes the trio in the tree-tops 
sat and stared in silence at one another and 
the weaving, champing herd of furious beasts 
below. It was Jud who spoke first. 

“It’s your move, Captain Pinto,” he re¬ 
marked. “What do we do next?” 

“Sit still until they go away,” returned the 
Indian despondently. 

“How many arrows have you left?” in¬ 
quired Will from his tree. 

“Ten.” 

“I’ve got sixteen shots in my locker,” ob¬ 
served Jud, from his perch; “but there must 
be nearly a hundred pigs in this herd; an’ 
if these big fellows are like the chaps I knew 
in Mexico, the more you kill, the more those 
that are left will try to kill you.” 

“The only thing to do is to sit still,” re¬ 
peated the Mundurucu. “Perhaps they go 
’way before night.” 

“Perhaps they don’t, too,” grumbled Jud. 


THE BLACK TIGER 135 

“A pig ’s an obstinate critter at his best, an’ a 
peccary’s a pig at his worst I” 

As time went on, conversation among the 
besieged flagged and each one settled down to 
endure the wait as best he might. Will 
amused himself by watching the birds which 
passed him among the tree-tops and listening 
to some of their strange and beautiful songs. 
At any time of the year and in any part of 
the world, a bird-student can always find 
pleasure in his hobby where unseeing, unhear¬ 
ing people find nothing of interest. To-day 
the first bird that caught his eye looked 
something like a crow, save that it had 
a crest of curved, hairy feathers, which at 
times, on its perch in a neighboring tree, it 
would raise and spread out over its head like 
a fringed parasol. From its breast swung a 
pad of feather-covered flesh, and, as it 
perched, it would every now and then give a 
deep low flute-note, raising its parasol each 
time in a most comical manner. 

“What’s that bird, Pinto?” Will inquired, 
after he had watched it delightedly for a long 
time. 


i 3 6 THE INCA EMERALD 

“He'umbrella-bird,” returned the other, in¬ 
differently; “no good to eat.” For the Mun- 
durucu had a very simple system of ornithol¬ 
ogy—he divided all birds into two groups, 
those that were good to eat and those that 
were not. 

The next bird which passed by aroused the 
interest even of Jud, who cared even less for 
birds than did the Indian. Through the dim 
light of the sinister forest, above the raging, 
swinish herd, flitted a bird of almost unearthly 
beauty, a parrot over three feet in length, of a 
soft, hyacinthine blue except around the eyes, 
where the bare skin showed white. As Will 
watched it delightedly, he recognized the bird 
as the hyacinthine macaw, the largest, most 
beautiful, and one of the rarest of all the 
parrot family. Even as he looked, the great 
bird alighted on a neighboring Brazil-nut tree 
and immediately showed itself to be as effi¬ 
cient as it was beautiful. Seizing in its great 
black beak one of the tough, thick nut-cases, 
called “monkey-pots” by the Indians, it pro¬ 
ceeded to twist off its top and open up a side, 
although a man finds difficulty in doing this 


THE BLACK TIGER 


T 37 


even with a hammer and chisel. Drawing 
out one Brazil-nut after another, it crushed 
them, in spite of their hard, thick shells, into 
a pulp, which it swallowed. Then it flew 
away, leaving Will staring regretfully after it. 

As noon approached, the vines and the tree- 
trunks seemed to hold and radiate the heat 
like boiler-tubes. Gradually it rose and con¬ 
centrated until the forest seemed to throb and 
pulsate like a furnace. Then a cicada began 
to sound. It began with a low, jarring note, 
something like the creaking of our ordinary 
katydid. This increased slowly in loudness 
and volume until at last it ended with an al¬ 
most unendurable siren-whistle note which 
seemed to shake the very leaves of the trees. 
Again and again and again this performance 
was repeated, until Will, deafened and 
stunned by the noise, dizzy with the heat, and 
cramped and tired of standing on his narrow 
perch, thought with an almost unutterable 
longing of the dark, cool river and the shaded 
boat where the rest of the party were even now 
taking their noontide nap. 

Suddenly, when it seemed to Will as if his 


138 THE INCA EMERALD 

tortured brain absolutely could not stand one 
more repetition of this song, the talented ci¬ 
cada, with one farewell screech that surpassed 
all previous efforts, lay off for the day. For 
a few minutes there was almost complete si¬ 
lence in the darkened forest. Many of the 
guardian herd had laid down, wallowing in 
the soft mold and fallen leaves, while others, 
although they stared redly up into the tree- 
tops, no longer moved around and around in 
a circle of which the trapped hunters were the 
center. Suddenly, from the depths of a near¬ 
by tree, a pure, sweet, contralto voice sounded, 
as if some boy were singing to himself. For 
a moment it rose and fell, and then followed 
a few plaintive notes almost like those of a tiny 
flute. Then a slow melody began, full of mel¬ 
low notes, only to be broken off abruptly. 
After a pause, there came a few clicking notes 
like those made by a music-box as it runs 
down, and the performance was over. Al¬ 
though the song came from the dark, glossy 
leaves of the very next tree, stare as he would, 
Will could gain no sight of the singer. Twice 
more the same thing happened. Each time 



THE BLACK TIGER 


i39 


he listened with a feeling that this time the 
tune would be finished and would be such as 
no mortal ears had heard before; but each 
time the song would die away in futile click¬ 
ing notes. When at last the silence was again 
unbroken, Will turned toward the Indian. 

“What was it, Pinto?’’ he asked softly. 

“That organ-bird.” 

“What does it look like?” 

“Don’t know. No one ever see it.” 

“How do you know it’s a bird?” 

“Professor Ditson say so,” returned Pinto, 
conclusively. 

“That settles it,” broke in Jud, jealously, 
from his tree. “He never saw it; nobody ever 
saw it; but the professor calls it an organ- 
bird. If he said it was an angel, I suppose it 
would be an angel.” 

“Yes,” returned the Indian placidly. 

The argument was suddenly ended for Will 
in a terrible manner. A sharp, burning pain 
shot through his left shoulder, as if a red-hot 
coal had been pressed there. As he turned, 
he saw, trickling down the tree-trunk, long 
crimson streams, one of which had already 


140 THE INCA EMERALD 

reached him, and he recognized, to his horror, 
a troop of the dreaded fire-ants. Even as he 
looked, the bites of several others pierced his 
skin, and the pain ran like a liquid poison 
through his veins as each blood-red ant rushed 
forward and buried its envenomed jaws deep 
into his flesh. Brushing off with frantic haste 
those torturers that had succeeded in reaching 
him, the boy began to slip down the vine to¬ 
ward the ground, for it was no more possible 
to resist this red torrent of poison and agony 
than it would be to stand against a creeping 
fire or a stream of molten lava. 

Old Jud heard the involuntary cry, which 
the sudden pain had wrung from Will, and 
looked over, only to see the red columns of 
ants streaming slowly, inevitably down the 
tree, driving Will before them to what seemed 
certain death. The peccary herd, aroused by 
his movements, had gathered around the tree 
in close-packed ranks, and frothing, clattering, 
and moaning, waited for him, making a circle 
of gleaming tusks. 

“Go back!” called out Jud. “Go back! 
You can’t possibly get through ’em.” 


THE BLACK TIGER 


Hi 

“I can’t!” called back Will. “I’d rather 
die fighting than be tortured to death up 
here.” 

As he spoke he slid another yard toward 
the ground. Jud drew in his breath in a gasp 
that was almost a groan, and, unslinging his 
ready automatic, began to scramble down to 
the ground.” 

“What you do?” called out the Indian, 
aghast, from his tree. 

“I’m a-goin’ to stand by that kid,” said the 
old trapper, grimly. “I ’ll never go back to 
the boat alive without him.” 

“Stay where you are, Jud,” shouted Will, 
desperately, as he gripped the keen hatchet 
which he had borrowed from Joe when he 
started on this ill-omened hunt. 

“Come on, boy!” shouted the trapper, un- 
heedingly, as he neared the ground. “I ’ll 
meet you, an’ you fight through them -to my 
tree. The old man’s a-goin’ to be right with 
you.” 

His words were punctuated by the deadly 
pop of Pinto’s blow-gun. Although the In¬ 
dian could not attain to Jud’s height of self- 


i 4 2 THE INCA EMERALD 

sacrifice, yet he had made up his mind to do 
all that he could do to save the boy with the 
weapon he had. Again and again and again, 
as fast as he could level, load, and discharge 
his long blow-pipe, the fatal little arrows sped 
through the gloom and buried themselves in 
the thick hides of the peccaries. Already 
some of the inner ring were wavering and 
staggering under the effects of the deadly 
urari poison. The sight of their stricken 
comrades, however, only seemed to drive the 
herd into deeper depths of dumb, unreason¬ 
ing madness. They pressed closer and closer 
to the tree, trampling their dead and dying 
comrades unheedingly underfoot, and the 
chorus of moaning grunts and clicking tusks 
sounded loud and louder. 

The blood-red stream of fire-ants was half¬ 
way down the tree by this time, and Will was 
within a scant ten feet of the ground. The 
ants were very close as he lowered him¬ 
self another yard, then a foot lower, and a foot 
beyond that, until the tusks of the plunging, 
leaping peccaries beneath him nearly touched 
his shoes. Bracing his feet against the rough 


THE BLACK TIGER 


143 


trunk, he drew the little ax from his belt, and 
prepared to spring as far out toward Jud’s tree 
as possible, although his heart sank and the 
flesh of his legs and thighs seemed to curl and 
chill as he looked out upon the gleaming ring 
of sharp, slashing tusks among which he must 
leap. Once downed by the herd, and he 
would be ripped to pieces before he could re¬ 
gain his feet. 

Jud by this time was on the ground, and was 
just about to shoot, in an attempt to open a 
passage through the packed herd, when un¬ 
expected help came from above. 

Out of the dark depths of a near-by silk- 
cotton tree sprang with silent swiftness a great 
black figure which gleamed in the half-light 
like watered silk. 

“Look out! Look out! The black tiger!” 
shouted Pinto, despairingly, from his tree, 
having shot his last arrow into the frothing 
circle. Even as he spoke, the “tiger,” as the 
Indians call the jaguar, landed full on the 
back and shoulders of the hindmost of the des¬ 
perate, raging circle. As he landed, the great 
cat struck one blow with that terrible full 


i 4 4 THE INCA EMERALD 

stroke of a jaguar, which has been known to 
break the neck of an ox, and the peccary, with 
a shrill squeal of terror, went down before the 
death which haunts every peccary herd. At 
the squeal, the wild swine swung away from 
the tree with an instantaneous rush. A jaguar 
is to a peccary herd what the gray wolf is to 
the musk-ox of the north and the very life of 
each member of the herd depends upon facing 
their foe. Upon the instant, every peccary 
left the trees and hurried toward their dying 
comrade. 

Unfortunately for the jaguar, the force of 
his spring, added to the impetus of his stroke, 
carried him too far, and for a moment he 
whirled over in a half-somersault and was en¬ 
tangled among the vines. Those lost seconds 
were fatal, in spite of all his strength and 
swiftness. Even as he recovered his feet in a 
lithe whirl and flirted over one shoulder the 
body of the dead peccary as a man might toss 
a rabbit, the death-ring formed around him. 
Two deep, the maddened swine circled him. 
With a deep, coughing roar, the tiger dropped 
his prey and struck with his armed paws light- 


THE BLACK TIGER 145 

ning-like blows that ripped the life out wher¬ 
ever they landed. By this time, however, the 
peccaries were beyond all fear of death, and 
a score of them dashed in upon him. Jud 
had involuntarily leveled his automatic at the 
great brute as it struck the ground, but low¬ 
ered it with a grim laugh. 

“He’s fightin’ for our lives as well as his 
own,” he called quietly to Will, as the latter 
reached the ground and slipped unnoticed 
past the heaving, tossing, fighting circle of 
peccaries. In another minute the boy had 
gained the safety of Jud’s tree and gripped 
the old man’s hand between his own. 

“Let’s stay here,” said the old trapper, “an’ 
see it out. We can climb this tree if they come 
back, an’ you ’ll never see a fight like this 
again.” 

Even as he spoke, the circle bent in upon the 
great cat. With desperate leaps, he tried to 
spring over its circumference; but each time 
it widened out so that always in front and at 
his back and on both flanks was a fence of 
sharp, slashing tusks. All around him lay 
dead peccaries which had fallen before his in- 


146 THE INCA EMERALD 

credibly rapid strokes; but now his dark, 
gleaming skin was furrowed and slit with long 
bloody slashes where the tusks of dead and dy¬ 
ing boars had gone home. His strength ebbed 
with his blood. Once more, with a deep, de¬ 
spairing roar, he struck with both paws, killing 
a peccary at each blow. Then he staggered 
forward, and in a minute was down! 

Time and again his great jaws opened and 
closed, sinking fierce white fangs deep 
through the skull or spine of some peccary, 
but at last only a black heaving of the furious 
wild pigs could be seen. At times the dark, 
desperate head of the dying tiger thrust its 
way out, only to fall back, smothered and 
slashed. Amid a scene of brute rage and 
fury which even Jud, old hunter as he was, 
had never imagined before, the little party 
slipped shudderingly away and hastened back 
over the trail along which they had come, nor 
ever stopped until they had reached the ref¬ 
uge of the montaria. There they found the 
rest of the party peacefully sleeping through 
the midday hours under a cool canopy of broad 
green palm-leaves which Hen had thrown to- 


THE BLACK TIGER 


H7 

gether. Professor Ditson was more inter¬ 
ested in their description of the black tiger 
than in any of the other details of their ad¬ 
venture. 

“It was the melanic type of the jaguar and 
very rare,” he said regretfully. “It was cer¬ 
tainly unfortunate that you could n’t have col¬ 
lected this one, for there is no specimen, liv¬ 
ing or dead, in any of the zoological gardens 
or natural-history museums of the world.” 

“You see, Professor,” explained Jud, “we 
were kind o’ busy in keepin’ some seventy- 
five peccaries from collectin’ us. What does 
‘melanic’ mean in American?” 

“Any animal may develop either a black 
or a white type,” explained the professor. 
“When black, it is called ‘melanic’; when 
white, ‘albino.’ You probably have seen 
black squirrels, muskrats, or skunks. They 
are simply color-variations of the ordinary 
species. So this ‘black tiger’ was only a jag¬ 
uar which for some unknown reason hap¬ 
pened to have a black skin. These black ex¬ 
amples,” he continued, “are neither fiercer 
nor larger than the ordinary kind, although 


148 THE INCA EMERALD 

generally considered so by unscientific ob¬ 
servers.” 

“What about some of those peccaries?” re¬ 
marked Joe, practically. “Can’t We bring in 
one or two that Pinto killed for fresh meat?” 

“No, sir,” returned Jud, emphatically, 
“I would n’t go back into that black bit of 
woods for all the fresh peccary pork in South 
America.” 

It was Hen Pine who noted that Will had 
taken no part in the discussion, and that he 
was flushed and feverish and suffering in¬ 
tensely from the intolerable pain of the fire- 
ant bites. 

“Honey, you come along with ol’ Hen,” he 
said soothingly, “an’ he ’ll fix you up so that 
you won’t feel that fire-poison hurtin’ any 
more.” 

Followed by Will, he led the way along the 
river-bank until they came to a small, round- 
topped tree with intensely green leaves. With 
his machete, Hen cut off several of the smaller 
branches. From the severed ends a thick, 
brilliant red sap oozed. 

“It’s the dragon’s-blood tree,” he explained 


THE BLACK TIGER 


149 

“an’ its juice makes the best balm in the world 
for burns or stings.” 

As he spoke he rubbed the thick, gummy 
liquid gently on the swollen and inflamed 
welts which the venomous bites of the fire- 
ants had raised on Will’s shoulders and back. 
Almost instantly the throbbing, rankling pain 
stopped, and there came such a feeling of 
grateful coolness that Will told Hen it was 
almost worth the pain of the bite to feel the 
relief of the cure. 

On the way back, Hen discovered another 
tree which brought the rest of the party nearly 
as much pleasure as the dragon’s-blood had 
given to Will. It had long, glossy leaves, and 
a straight smooth trunk as large around as a 
man’s body, though it was only about twenty 
feet high. It was loaded down with what 
looked like huge plums nearly the size of 
muskmelons. Hen told Will that it was the 
wild papaw tree. The fruit was delicious. 
When they brought back samples to the rest 
of the party, there was a stampede to the place 
and the boat was soon loaded with the luscious 
fruit. 


i5o THE INCA EMERALD 

As they explored the bank farther, Jud 
noticed that Hen was constantly chewing the 
dark green leaves of the wild cinnamon, which 
grew abundantly and had a spicy, pleasant 
smell like the well-known bark of that name. 
Without saying anything to Hen, the old man 
picked several and sampled them. Unfortun¬ 
ately for him, it takes prolonged practice to 
be able to chew wild cinnamon with any de¬ 
gree of comfort. As the fragrant fiery juice 
touched Jud’s tongue and gums he gasped, the 
tears ran from his eyes as if he had swallowed 
red pepper, and he spat out the burning leaves 
emphatically. 

“You must have a leather-lined mouth,” 
he remarked to the grinning negro. 

A little later, Hen added insult to the in¬ 
jury of the old trapper. They had come to a 
small tree loaded down with little round, rosy, 
fruit. 

“That what you need, Mars’ Jud,” Hen 
assured him. 

Thinking that it was perhaps a smaller edi¬ 
tion of the papaw tree, Jud trustingly sank 


THE BLACK TIGER 


iSi 

his teeth into one of the little spheres, only to 
find it bitter as gall. 

“What do you mean by tellin’ *me I need 
anything that tastes like that,” he howled. 

“I did n’t say for you to eat it,” laughed the 
black giant. “I say you needed it. That tree 
the soap-tree,” and Hen pointed to Jud’s 
grimy hand's suggestively. 

“I guess we all need it,” interrupted Will, 
tactfully, before Jud could express his indig¬ 
nation further. 

Picking handfuls of the little fruit, each 
one of the party dipped his hands into a 
pool near the river bank. The waxy surface 
of the rosy balls dissolved in a froth of lather 
which left their hands as clean and white as 
the best of soap could have done. 

As the day waned and the coolness of the 
late afternoon stole through the heat, the mon- 
taria was again loosed from the bank. All 
that night, under the light of another glo¬ 
rious full moon, they traveled fast and far. At 
last, just as the sun rose, there sounded a dis¬ 
tant boom. It became louder and louder 


152 THE INCA EMERALD 

until the air quivered and the dark surface of 
the river showed here and there flecks and 
blobs of foam. Then, as they swept around 
a bend in the black stream, there appeared 
before them a sight of unearthly beauty not 
seen of white men for twice two hundred 
years. 


CHAPTER VII 


THE YELLOW SNAKE 

O VER a vast horseshoe of towering 
crags, with a drumming roar, the 
dark, resistless river rushed in a mass 
of snowy foam and broken rainbows down into 
the whirling caldron below. 

“The Falls of Utiarity,” whispered Pinto, 
as he guided the boat into a little bend by 
the bank just above where the terrible down¬ 
ward glide of the river began. Making fast 
to a tree on shore, the whole party stared across 
at the most beautiful waterfall on earth, as 
if they could never see enough of its beauty. 
Something seemed to give way in Will’s brain, 
and for a long minute he felt as if he were 
entering a new and strange world. Dim, un¬ 
earthly images seemed to float before him. 
He thought of the great white throne in 
Revelation—the mystic emerald circled by a 

153 


154 THE INCA EMERALD 

rainbow and the pavement of a single sap¬ 
phire-stone. Before him was the beautiful 
water, sinking into the abyss, yet flowing on 
forever, while a great rainbow trembled, 
faded, then came again through the mist and 
spray like a beautiful spirit walking the 
waters. With the terror, the rush, and the 
roar of the crashing waters, was a beauty not 
of earth that took away all fear, until he 
seemed to be gazing into the seventh heaven 
and seeing that which was unlawful for 
mortal man to look upon. 

Only a moment, and once more he was 
back in the body and found himself looking 
confusedly into the faces of his companions, 
all of whom had felt something of the same 
uplift. Without a word, the Indian edged 
the canoe along the shore and into the mouth 
of a deep lagoon, half-hidden by overhanging 
trees. Beyond these it widened out and 
ended in a high, bare bank. Back from this 
stretched a narrow path, showing like a long 
line through the dark green of the jungle. 
Its surface was trodden ominously hard and 


THE YELLOW SNAKE 155 

smooth, as if crossed and recrossed by many 
bare feet. 

“The Trail/’ said Pinto, softly. 

“The Trail,” echoed Professor Ditson, as 
they all stared along the thin line which 
pierced the forest and led away and across 
the vast basin of the Amazon and on and past 
the guarded heights of Peru until it reached 
the mines from which Spain had dug the 
gold which enabled her to conquer and hold 
half the w)orld. Only the cruel, fierce, 
dogged fighters of Spain as she was four hun¬ 
dred years ago could have cut this path. 
Even then, when men thought little of life 
or of accomplishing the impossible, the Trail 
stood forth as a great achievement, every mile 
of which had cost the lives of men. 

For a time, the adventurers stared in si¬ 
lence at the brown line athwart the green, 
the sign and seal of an empire long passed 
away. Then Pinto grounded the montaria 
at the edge of the bank, and, after all of the 
party had disembarked with their scanty 
equipment, pulled the boat, with Hen’s help, 


156 THE INCA EMERALD 

back of a screen of tangled vines, marked by 
a slender assai-palm, until it was completely 
hidden from sight. 

“If we are successful,” remarked Pro¬ 
fessor Ditson, “we ’ll never see that boat 
again. If we are driven back along this 
trail, it may save our lives.” 

There was a silence. For the first time the 
boys and Jud realized that their leader defin¬ 
itely expected perils other than those ever 
present from the wild creatures that guarded 
the beautiful, treacherous, mysterious for¬ 
ests of this southern continent. 

“Are the Injuns down here dangerous?” 
inquired Jud, at last. 

“The personal habits of some of them do 
not commend themselves even to the most 
broad-minded investigators,” returned the 
professor, precisely. 

“Such as—” questioned Jud, again. 

“Well,” replied the scientist, slowly, “for 
one thing, the wild tribes of this part of the 
Amazon basin invariably eat any captives they 
make. Then—” 

“That’s enough,” broke in Jud. “After 


THE YELLOW SNAKE 157 

I Ve been eaten I don’t care what they do 
next. What might be the names of these 
gentlemen?” 

“The Mayas, I think, are the tribe we shall 
be most likely to meet,” said Professor Dit- 
son, reflectively. “They have no fixed homes, 
but wander through the forest, guiding them¬ 
selves by the sun, and sleep in the tree-tops 
like monkeys wherever they happen to be when 
night comes. They hunt men, red, white, or 
black,” he went on; “yet, if Indian traditions 
can be depended upon, we do not need to be 
afraid of them so long as we keep to the Trail.” 

“How’s that?” inquired Will, intensely 
Interested. 

“Every tribe which refers to the Trail,” 
the scientist informed them, “speaks of a 
custom called the ‘Truce of the Trail,’ under 
which travelers along that road are safe from 
attack.” 

“Does that there truce,” interposed Jud, 
“take in white men, or is it only for red¬ 
skins?” 

“That,” returned the professor, “is not cer¬ 
tain. Some say yes, some say no.” 


158 THE INCA EMERALD 

“The question is,” murmured Jud, “what 
do the Mayas say?” 

“If we pass the Trail in safety,” went on 
Professor Ditson, “we still may expect 
trouble from Dawson after we get into the 
Peruvian highlands. He has great influence 
with a band of Indian outlaws who call them¬ 
selves the Miranhas, or Killers, and may 
persuade them to ambush us in order to 
secure the map.” 

“I sure am lookin’ forward to this pleas¬ 
ure-trip of ours,” confided Jud to Will. 

During the first day along the trail, Will, 
who was next to Pinto, tried to pass away 
the time by learning a few words of Mun- 
durucu. His first lessons in that language, 
however, were somewhat discouraging, since 
the dialects of the South American Indians 
contain perhaps more syllables to a word 
than any other language on earth. 

“Pinto,” he began, “I ’ll point to things, 
and you tell me what they are in Indian, and 
keep on saying it over and over until I learn 
it.” 

“All right,” agreed the Mundurucu. 


THE YELLOW SNAKE 


159 

‘‘Professor Pinto,” went on Will solemnly, 
pointing to his hand, “what’s that?” 

“In-tee-ti-pix-tee-e-toke-kee-kee-tay-gaw,” 
clattered Pinto, in a breath. 

“Hey, hold up there,” said Will. “Try 
it in low.” 

Half an hour later found him still working 
on that single word. 

“Whew!” he remarked when he finally 
had it memorized, “I Ve heard it takes eight 
years to learn Eskimo. It’s liable to take 
me eighty before I can talk Mundurucu. 
What about this one?” he went on, undis¬ 
couraged, pointing to a curious tree with a 
mahogany-red bark—which, if he had but 
known it, was a stranger whose seeds had in 
some way drifted down from much farther 
north. 

“E-lit-ta-pix-tee-e-fa-cho-to-kee-not-e,” said 
Pinto, slowly and distinctly. 

For fifteen minutes Will wrestled with this 
new word. 

“Do you know what he said?” at last in¬ 
terrupted Professor Ditson, who had been 
listening to the lesson. 


160 THE INCA EMERALD 


“He gave me the name for that tree, did n’t 
he?” returned Will, a little peevishly. 

“Not at all,” said the scientist. “He simply 
said, ‘I don’t know.’ ” 

“Not so blame simply, either,” murmured 
Jud, who had also been following the lesson. 

“Our own language is full of similar mis¬ 
takes imported from native dialects,” lectured 
(Professor Ditson. “ ‘Kangaroo’ simply means 
‘I don’t know’ in Bushman; so do ‘mosquito’ 
and ‘quinine’ and ‘cockatoo’ in different In¬ 
dian languages.” 

“Well,” said Will, “I’m going to pass up 
Mundurucu. Here I’ve spent the better part 
of an hour in learning two words—and one 
of them is n’t right.” 

“It’s a gift, my boy,” said Jud, patroniz¬ 
ingly. “As for myself, I once learned three 
Indian languages, Apache, Comanche, an’ 
Sioux, in less than a month.” 

“Indeed!” broke in Professor Ditson, cut¬ 
tingly. “You surprise me. Won’t you favor 
me with a few sentences in Apache?” 

“Surely,” returned Jud, generously. “Ask 


THE YELLOW SNAKE 161 


me anything you like in Apache, an’ I ’ll be 
glad to answer it in the same language.” 

The appearance of a small pond ahead put 
a stop to further adventure in linguistics, since 
Pinto had promised to catch some fish from 
the next water they met. As they came to 
the shore, suddenly, before Jud’s astonished 
eyes, a fish about a foot long thrust its head 
out of the dark water, opened its mouth, and 
breathed like any mammal. A moment later 
it meowed like a cat, growled like a dog, and 
then went under. 

“I ’ll never dare tell ’em about this in Corn¬ 
wall,” exclaimed Jud, earnestly, as the talented 
fish disappeared. “They’d think I was ex¬ 
aggeratin’, an’ that’s one thing I never do. 
This trip,” he went on reflectively, “is liable 
to make me believe blame near anything.” 

It was Professor Ditson who told them 
that the strange fish was a lung-fish and was 
a link between the fishes and the reptiles. 

A little later, Pinto, with a length of flexible 
palm-fiber, noosed a garpike, that strange 
reresentative of the oldest family of fishes 


i 6 z THE INCA EMERALD 


left on earth, and another link with the rep¬ 
tiles. Its vertebrae had ball-and-socket joints 
like the spine of a snake, and, unlike any 
other fish, it could move its head independ¬ 
ently of its body. Armored scales arranged 
in diagonal rows ran down its back, being 
fastened to each other by a system of hooks, 
instead of lapping over each other like the 
scales of other fishes. This armor was of 
such flinty hardness that Pinto struck a spark 
from it with his steel, and actually lighted 
from its own scales the fire on which the fish 
was cooked. 

By this pond grew a great orchid with 
thirty-one flower-stems, on one of which 
Will counted over a thousand beautiful pearl- 
and-gold blossoms. Near the water, too, were 
many varieties of tropical birds flaming 
through the trees. Among them were flocks 
of paraquets colored green and blue and red; 
little honey-creepers with black, purple, and 
turquoise plumage and brilliant scarlet feet; 
and exquisite tiny tanagers like clusters of 
jewels with their lilac throats, turquoise 
breasts, topaz crowns, and purple-black backs 


THE YELLOW SNAKE 163 

shading into ruby red. These were all search¬ 
ing for insects, while among the blossoms 
whirred dainty little humming-birds of the 
variety known as “wood-stars.” Then there 
were blood-red macaws with blue-and-gold 
wings, and lustrous green-black toucans with 
white throats, red-and-yellow tail-coverts, 
and huge black-and-yellow bills. 

For the next few days the treasure-hunt¬ 
ers followed the narrow, hard-beaten path 
through stretches of dark jungle and thorny 
thickets, or found themselves skirting lonely 
lakes hidden in the very heart of the virgin 
forest. Everywhere the Trail was omniously 
clear and hard-trodden. Sometimes they all 
had that strange knowledge that they were 
being watched, which human beings who live 
in the open acquire as well as the wild folk. 

At last there came a day when the supplies 
had run so low that it became necessary for 
Pinto to do some hunting. Will went with 
him, and together they silently and cautiously 
followed one of the many little paths that at 
irregular intervals branched off from the main 
trail. This one was so hidden by vines and 


i6 4 THE INCA EMERALD 

creepers that it seemed improbable that any 
one had used it for a long period of time. It 
led the hunters into one of the patches of open 
country sometimes found in the forests of the 
Amazon. This particular one was fringed 
with great trees and crossed by another path 
nearly parallel to the one they were following. 

Near the center of the clearing, Pinto 
managed to shoot two curassows, huge, plump 
birds which looked and tasted much like tur¬ 
keys. Leaving these with his companion, the 
Indian pushed on ahead for more. Suddenly 
he reappeared among the trees, and Will not¬ 
iced as he hurried toward him, that his copper- 
colored face showed gray and drawn, while 
beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. As 
he joined the boy, Pinto placed his finger on 
his lips with a look of ghastly terror and led 
Will into the deepest part of a near-by thicket. 
From there, though hidden from sight, they 
had a view through the close-set bushes of the 
other path. Suddenly, from far down that 
trail, sounded a faint, but regular, clicking 
noise. As it became louder and louder, ris¬ 
ing and falling in a regular cadence, Pinto 


THE YELLOW SNAKE 165 

slipped like a snake deeper into the long 
jungle-grass. 

“Lie still for your life,” he whispered in 
Will’s ear, so faintly that the boy could 
scarcely make out the words. Then, in an 
instant, from out of the jungle not twenty feet 
away there strode along the dim path a figure 
of nightmare horror—that of a tall naked 
man, with gaunt and fleshless arms and legs, 
great knobs of bone marking his knee and 
elbow-joints. His sunken body was painted 
black, with every bone outlined in a chalky 
white, so that he seemed a living, walking 
skeleton. 

Around the black and wasted neck, wrinkled 
like that of a mummy, hung a long string of 
small bones which, with a thrill of horror, 
the boy recognized by their nails as those of 
human fingers. It was these, striking together, 
which made the clicking noise that Will had 
heard. The face of the horror was painted 
black, except the lips and chin, which showed 
blood-red, while out of the holes at the corners 
of the lower lip protruded curved, gleaming 
peccary-tusks. These ornaments gave an in- 


166 THE INCA EMERALD 


describably brutish appearance to the counte¬ 
nance that they ornamented, while above them 
two snaky black eyes with an expression of 
implacable cruelty glittered like crumbs of 
glass from under overhanging brows. Like 
a specter, the shape disappeared among the 
shadows; but it was followed by another and 
another and another, until a long procession 
of terrible figures had passed. 

As the ill-omened clicking died away in the 
distance Will sprang to his feet. 

“No!” hissed the Indian. “Our only 
chance of life is to lie quiet. That is a Maya 
war-party on a man-hunt!” 

“They ’ll meet the others on the Trail,” 
whispered Will. 

“Six men can’t do any more against fifty 
than two,” returned Pinto, practically. 
“We ’ll only throw away our lives and not 
save theirs.” 

“Stay if you want,” returned the boy; “I ’ll 
live or die with them!” and he sped back at 
full speed along the path over which they had 
come. Just before he reached the Trail he 


THE YELLOW SNAKE 167 

looked back—and there was Pinto at his 
shoulder. 

“Very foolish,” the latter muttered, “but*^> 
I come too.” 

Down the Trail the two hurried, and, 
rounding a bend, burst in suddenly upon the 
rest of the party lying in the shade of the over¬ 
hanging trees awaiting their return. 

“Mayas! Mayas!” gasped Pinto. 

As he spoke, far down the Trail from 
around a curve sounded the faint, ominous 
clicking which the two hunters had heard 
before. 

It was then that the old scientist showed 
that he deserved the right to lead which he 
claimed. 

“Stand still!” he said sternly to Pinto, as 
the latter seemed inclined to bolt down the 
Trail away from the fatal sound. “Put up 
your gun!” he ordered Jud; “the Truce is our 
only chance.” 

Then, with quick, decisive commands, he 
lined the party up so that no part of the body 
of any one of them extended beyond the sur¬ 
face of the Trail, and yet a space was left wide 


168 THE INCA EMERALD 


enough to allow any others using the path to 
pass. At the head of the line he placed the 
two Indians, Joe and Pinto, so that the Mayas 
might note the presence in the party of mem¬ 
bers of their own race. 

“Show the peace sign,” he snapped sharply 
to Joe, who led the line. “Brace up!” he 
went on, slapping Pinto sharply on his bare 
back; “don’t look so scared. No matter what 
they do,” he said, turning to the rest of the 
company, “don’t leave the Trail for a second 
or make any kind of attack on them. They 
will probably try to make us break the Truce 
of the Trail. If any of us do, we are all lost.” 

“My peace sign,” muttered Jud, grimly, 
“will be an automatic in one hand an’ this 
little toothpick in the other,” and he opened 
the five-inch blade of the jack-knife with 
which he had killed old Three Toes, the 
grizzly, as already chronicled in “The Blue 
Pearl.” “If I’m goin’ to be eaten,” he went 
on, “there ’ll be eighteen Mayas that ain’t 
goin’ to have any appetite for the meal”; and 
he shifted the single clip of cartridges re- 


THE YELLOW SNAKE 169 

maining, so that he could feed them into the 
automatic if it came to a last stand. 

All further conversation was ended by the 
appearance of the same horrible apparition 
which had so terrified Pinto a short time be¬ 
fore. As the gaunt painted skeleton of the 
first Maya showed against the green back¬ 
ground, surmounted by the black and blood- 
red face with the grinning tusks and implaca¬ 
ble eyes, an involuntary gasp went up from 
the whole waiting party. Jud slipped the 
safety-catch from his revolver; Pinto’s face 
looked as if suddenly powdered with ashes; 
Will’s hands stole to the hatchet at his belt; 
while, down at the end of the line, Hen Pine 
gripped his heavy machete until his great 
muscles stood out like iron bands. Two of 
the party alone showed no sign of any emo¬ 
tion: Joe, the descendant of a long line of 
of proud Chippewa chiefs, disdainfully 
stretched out both empty hands palms up in 
the peace-sign; while Professor Ditson’s calm 
face seemed to show only the mild interest 
of a scientist. 


i7o THE INCA EMERALD 

As the leading Maya caught sight of the 
waiting line, he slowed his swift stride and 
the war-party crept up close and closer. 
Then came the tense moment which would 
decide whether the Truce was to hold. As 
the grim hunters moved up, there was no 
sign on the face of any of them of any ac¬ 
ceptance of the peace which Joe had offered. 
With short, gliding steps, they made a com¬ 
plete circle around the little party, closing up 
until their menacing, fearful faces were less 
than a foot away and the reek of their naked 
bodies was like the hot taint of jaguars of the 
jungle in the nostrils of the waiting six. In 
their left hands they carried bows and quivers 
of fiercely fanged arrows gummed with 
fatal venom, while from their belts swung 
curved, saw-toothed knives and short, heavy 
clubs, the heads of which were studded with 
alligators’ teeth. 

As the Mayas came closer, the waiting line 
wavered involuntarily before the terrible 
menace of their hating, hateful faces. The 
Mundurucu especially, although no coward, 
had been taught from earliest childhood to 


THE YELLOW SNAKE 171 

dread these man-eaters, the Mayas. It was 
Professor Ditson who noticed that, in spite of 
their menacing approach, not a single warrior 
had as yet gripped a weapon. 

“'Steady, Pinto, steady all,” he said calmly, 
“They’re trying to stampede us. If one of 
you leaves the Trail, we’re all dead men.” 

He spoke just in time, for already Pinto 
was looking longingly toward the refuge of 
the forest, forgetting that the woodcraft of 
those hunters of men was superior even to his 
own. Perhaps even Professor Ditson’s voice 
would not have stopped him if it had not 
been for a sudden happening. 

As the leader of the Mayas half-circled 
around Joe, the latter turned to face him, still 
holding out his arms. The motion flung 
open his flannel shirt, unbuttoned to the waist, 
and showed, tattooed red on his brown skin, 
the curling, twisted totem-mark of inter¬ 
twined serpents by which Joe had claimed 
the right of his blood in the lodge of the Great 
Chief during the quest of the Blue Pearl. 
As the Maya caught sight of this sign he 
stopped in his tracks. Little by little the 


172 THE INCA EMERALD 

menace died out of his fierce eyes, and, as if 
drawn by a magnet, he crept in closer and 
closer with outstretched neck, staring at the 
tattoo marks which wound down and around 
Joe’s waist. Then, with a sudden gesture, he 
swept aside the ghastly necklace that he wore. 
There, outlined against his fleshless chest 
just over his heart, showed a similar 
emblem—crimson inter-twining serpents fac¬ 
ing in opposite directions, with gaping 
mouths like those of which the totem-pole was 
made which towered before the lodge of the 
Great Chief in far-away Akotan. The Maya 
chief stood motionless for a moment. Then 
he stretched both hands out toward Joe, palms 
up, and stood as if waiting. 

“Put your hands in his, boy,” hissed Jud, 
from down the line; “he’s waitin’ for the 
brotherhood sign.” 

Without a word, Joe clasped hands with 
the Maya chief, and for an instant the two 
looked into each other’s eyes, the spectral 
cannibal and the lithe son of a French trapper 
and a Chippewa princess. Then, disengag- 


THE YELLOW SNAKE 


173 


ing his right hand, the Maya fumbled at his 
belt and suddenly stretched out toward Joe 
the supple, beautiful tanned skin of a snake, 
such as but one of the party had ever seen 
before. It was long and narrow and of a 
flashing golden-yellow, thickly flecked with 
tiny red-brown spots. This he wound around 
the boy’s neck, so that it swung gleaming 
against his gray flannel shirt. Once again 
with outstretched hands the strange figure 
stood as if waiting, encircled the while by 
fierce, impassive faces with tusks gleaming 
horribly against blood-red jaws, and white 
painted bodies showing like ghosts against the 
green of the forest. 

“Give him your tie,” dictated Jud. “Don’t 
you know blood-brothers have to exchange 
presents?” 

Joe hesitated. He had a weakness, per¬ 
haps inherited from both sides of his family, 
for neckties of the most barbaric colors. The 
one that he was wearing was one of Corn¬ 
wall’s best and brightest, a brilliant green- 
and-purple creation which had cost him a 


i 7 4 THE INCA EMERALD 

whole dollar at White Wilcox’s store. To 
give it up would leave him tieless in a great 
wilderness. 

“Hurry!” muttered Professor Ditson, as 
the Maya chief began to lower his out¬ 
stretched hands. 

Thus urged, the boy reluctantly pulled a 
foot of glimmering silk from his neck, and the 
next instant the most brilliant tie that ever 
graced Mr. Wilcox’s emporium was gleaming 
against the gray-white of a necklace of hu¬ 
man bones. 

The Maya received the enforced present 
with a grunt of undisguised pleasure, and, 
raising both hands above his head with palms 
outstretched, faced his waiting band and be¬ 
gan a crooning song filled with strange minor 
cadences. One by one his men took up the 
strain, and, led by him, filed away from the 
trail like ghosts going back to their graves. 
f As the clicking of their necklaces and the 
notes of their chant sounded faint and fainter 
and at last died away in the green tangle 
of the jungle, a long sigh of relief came un- 


THE YELLOW SNAKE 175 

consciously from every member of the expe¬ 
dition. It was Jud who first broke the si¬ 
lence. 

“I ’ve always heard,” he said, “that Injuns 
north, south, east, an’ west belonged to the 
four main totems, the Bear, the Wolf, the 
Snake, an’ the Eagle, but I never believed it 
before to-day. That old tattoo-mark, boy,” 
he went on, turning to Joe, “certainly came in 
right handy.” 

“He gone off with my good tie,” returned 
Joe, sorrowfully. 

“And a good job, too, I call it,” remarked 
Will, who had never approved his friend’s 
taste in neckwear. 

It was the Maya’s present which most in¬ 
terested Pinto and Professor Ditson. The 
Mundurucu Indian sidled up close to Joe and 
stared at the glittering skin with all his eyes, 
but without attempting to touch it. 

“It’s the sacred snake that in the old days 
only kings and gods could wear,” he mur¬ 
mured. 

“He’s right,” said Professor Ditson, rais- 


176 THE INCA EMERALD 

ing the gleaming, golden skin reverently from 
Joe’s neck. “It’s the skin of the Yellow Snake 
which the Aztecs used to wind around the 
forehead of Atapetl, their terrible goddess of 
war. Only her priests knew where to find 
these snakes, and it was death for any one 
else even to look at the skin except at the an¬ 
nual sacrifices of the goddess. This one,” he 
went on, “will be a safe-conduct for the whole 
party all the way to Peru—and ought to be a 
lesson to you,” he continued severely, turning 
to Jud, “never to speak against snakes again.” 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE MAN-EATERS 

F IVE days later they came to a great lake 
which seemed to stretch away through 
the depths of the forest interminably, 
with the trail following its winding shores. 

At the first sight of the water shining in 
the sunlight, Pinto showed signs of great un¬ 
easiness. 

“This must be the Lake of the Man-eaters,” 
he said to Professor Ditson. “I have heard 
the wise men of the tribe speak of it many 
times. All the animals around it are eaters 
of men. See, perhaps there be some of their 
tracks now!” and he pointed to where there 
showed in the soft sand what looked like 
the paw-prints of a huge cat. 

“Pinto,” said the professor, severely, “I’m 
ashamed of you! The sight of those Mayas 
has made your mind run on man-eaters. 

177 


178 THE INCA EMERALD 

Don’t you know a puma’s track when you see 
them, and don’t you know that a puma never 
attacks a man?” 

“‘The perfesser’s right for once,” chimed 
in Jud. “That’s the track of what we call a 
mountain-lion or panther up north, an’ they 
don’t never hurt nobody.” 

Pinto was still unconvinced. “Perhaps 
they do here,” he insisted. 

“You come along with me,” returned Pro¬ 
fessor Ditson. “We ’ll explore this lake a 
bit before dark.” And, followed by all of 
the party except Will and Jud, whose turn 
it was to make camp, he disappeared around a 
bend in the shore. 

The two who were left behind soon found 
a high, sandy bank where they cleared a space 
and started a small fire. Just in front of 
them was a tiny bay, connected with the lake 
by a narrow channel edged by lines of waving 
ferns, while a little beach of white sand 
curved away to the water in front of the 
camp-site. 

“Here is where Judson Adams, Esquire, 
takes a bath,” suddenly announced the old 


THE MAN-EATERS 


179 


trapper, producing a couple of cakes of tree- 
soap, which he had picked along the trail, 
and slipping out of his clothes like an eel. 

“Pinto said never to go into strange water,” 
warned Will. 

“Pooh,” said Jud. “He was talkin’ about 
rivers where them murderin’ catfish an ’ana¬ 
condas hide. This pool ain’t ten feet across 
an’ there’s nothin’ in it except a few stray 
minnies”; and he pointed out to Will a little 
school of short, deep-bodied fish which looked 
something like the sunfish which thq boys 
used to catch along the edges of Cream Hill 
Pond. Otherwise no living creature showed 
in the clear water, nor could be concealed 
along the bright, pebbly bottom. 

“Better not,” warned Will again. “This 
ain’t your country, Jud. Pinto seemed to 
know what he was talking about. Let’s wait 
until the professor gets back.” 

“Pinto will never win any Carnegie medals, 
an’ I guess I can take a bath without gettin’ 
permission from the perfesser,” returned Jud, 
obstinately. “However,” he went on, “just 
to show you that the old man never takes any 


180 THE INCA EMERALD 


chances, I ’ll poke a stick around in this pool 
to drive out the devil-fish that may be hidin’ 
here.” 

Nothing happened as the old man prodded 
the water with a long branch cut from a near¬ 
by tree, except that the motion of the stick 
seemed to attract more and more of the 
chubby fish which he had first seen from the 
outer channel into the pool. 

“Gee,” remarked Jud, “but those fish are 
tame! I’ll bet if I had a hook an’ line I 
could flick out a dozen. Better come in with 
me, Bill,” he went on. “I promised your 
family that I’d see that you boys took plenty 
of baths an’ kept your hair brushed all through 
this trip.” 

“I ’ll wait till the boss comes back,” said 
Will, laughingly. 

That was enough for Jud. 

“I’m my own boss!” he remarked indig¬ 
nantly, and waded in with a cake of tree- 
grown soap clenched tightly in one hand. 

His first step took him well above his knees. 
There was a swirl and a flash from the center 


THE MAN-EATERS 181 

of the pool, and in an instant the whole sur¬ 
face was alive with a furious rush of the short, 
deep-bodied fish toward Jud. As they ap¬ 
proached, the old man noticed uneasily their 
staring, malignant eyes, and that they had 
projecting, gaping lower jaws, thickly set 
with razor-edged, triangular teeth. 

Suddenly the whole school were upon him, 
crowding into the shallow water where he 
stood and snapping at his bare legs like mad 
dogs. Before he could stir, two of them had 
bitten pieces of flesh out of the calves of both 
of his legs. As the blood from their bites 
touched the surface of the pool, the fish seemed 
to go entirely mad, snapping their fierce jaws 
frantically and even springing clear of the 
water, like trout leaping at a fly. 

If they had not been so numerous that they 
jostled each other, or if Jud had not been 
quicker than most men twenty years younger,, 
he would have been terribly mutilated. As- 
it was, when he finally reached the safety of 
the bank, the water which he had just left 
boiled and bubbled like a caldron, and two of 


182 THE INCA EMERALD 


the fish followed him so closely that they 
landed, flapping, snapping, and squealing, far 
up on the white sand. 

When Will approached them, the stranded 
fish tried to spring at him, clicking their jaws 
with impotent, savage fury. A moment later, 
as he tried to hold one of them down with a 
stick, it drove its keen wedge-shaped teeth 
clear through the hard wood. When the rest 
of the party came back, they found Jud and 
Will staring as if fascinated at the desperate, 
raging dwellers of the pool. 

“I told you strange water not safe,” said 
Pinto, as Professor Ditson skilfully bandaged 
Jud’s legs with a dressing of sphagnum moss 
and the thick red sap of the dragon’s-blood 
tree. “Look,” and he showed Will that a 
joint of one of his fingers was missing. “Can¬ 
nibal-fish more dangerous than anaconda or 
piraiba. They kill tiger and eat up alligator 
if it get wounded. Once,” he went on, “white 
man ride a mule across river where these fish 
live. They bit mule and he threw man off 
Into the river. When I got there an hour 
later only skeleton left of mule. Man’s 


THE MAN-EATERS 183 

clothes lie at bottom of river, but only bones 
inside. You wait a little. I pay them well.’* 
And he disappeared into the woods. 

Professor Ditson corroborated the Indian. 

“They are undoubtedly the fiercest and 
most dangerous fish that swim,” he said. “If 
the water is disturbed, it arouses them, and 
the taste or smell of blood seems to drive them 
mad.” 

By the time Jud was patched up, Pinto 
came back trailing behind him a long length 
of liana, from either end of which oozed a 
white liquid. This vine he pounded between 
two stones and threw into the pool. A min¬ 
ute later the water was milky from the flow¬ 
ing juice, and before long was filled with 
floating, motionless piranhas stupefied by the 
poisonous sap. Pinto fished out several with a 
long stick, and breaking their necks, wrapped 
them in balls of blue clay which he found 
along the shore, and, first making air-holes, 
set them to bake in the hot coals of the fire. 
When at last a smell of roast fish went up 
from the midst of the fire, Pinto pulled each 
ball out and broke the hard surface with light 


i8 4 THE INCA EMERALD 

taps of a stick. The skin and scales came off 
with the clay. Opening the fish carefully, he 
cleaned it, leaving nothing but the savory 
white baked meat, which tasted and looked 
almost exactly like black bass. Jud avenged 
himself by eating seven. 

Toward the end of the afternoon, Professor 
Amandus Ditson left the rest of the party re¬ 
clining in that state of comfort and satisfac¬ 
tion which comes after a good meal. Each 
day the professor devoted all of his spare 
time toward realizing the greatest ambition of 
his life, to wit, the acquirement of one full- 
grown, able-bodied bushmaster. To-day 
armed with nothing more dangerous than a 
long crotched stick, he strolled along the trail, 
leaving it occasionally to search every mound 
or hillock which showed above the flat level 
of the jungle, since in such places this king of 
the pit-vipers is most apt to be found. Two 
hundred yards away from the camp, the trail 
took a turn, following the curved shore of 
the great lake, and in a few minutes the scien¬ 
tist was entirely out of sight or sound of the 
rest of the party. At last, finding nothing in- 


THE MAN-EATERS 185 

land he turned his steps toward the lake it¬ 
self. On some bare spaces showing between 
the trail and the edge of the water, he saw 
more of the puma-tracks like those which 
Pinto had pointed out earlier in the day. Re¬ 
membering the Indian’s fear the scientist 
smiled as he examined the fresh prints of big 
pads and long claws. 

“Harmless as tomcats,” he muttered to 
himself. 

A moment later something happened which 
upset both the professor and his theories. As 
he straightened up, a hundred pounds of 
puma landed upon him. The legend of the 
lake, as far as pumas were concerned, was 
evidently correct. Harmless to man in other 
places, here, it seemed, the great cat stalked 
men as if they were deer. This one intended 
to sink the curved claws of her forepaws in 
the professor’s shoulders, and, with her teeth 
at his throat, to rake his body with the terrible 
downward, slashing strokes of the catamount 
clan. Fortunately for himself, he had half- 
turned at the sound which her sudden spring 
made among the bushes. Instead of catching 


186 THE INCA EMERALD 


his throat, the panther’s fanged jaws closed 
on the upper part of his left arm, while her 
forepaws gripped his shoulders, which were 
protected by a khaki coat and flannel shirt 
Professor Ditson promptly caught the ani¬ 
mal’s throat with his sinewy right hand and 
held the great beast off at arm’s length, thus 
keeping his body beyond the range of the 
deadly sickle-like hind claws. For a moment 
the puma’s luminous gooseberry green eyes 
stared into his, and he could see the soft 
white of her under parts and the long, tawny 
tail which is the hall-mark of her family. 
As he sank his steel-strong fingers deeper into 
the great brute’s throat, Professor Ditson 
abandoned all hope of life, for no unarmed 
man can hope to cope successfully with any 
of the great carnivora. 

“A dozen zoologists have lied in print!” he 
murmured to himself, indignantly. 

Even as he spoke, he tried to wrench his 
left arm free. He immediately found, how¬ 
ever, that it was impossible to pull it straight 
out from between the keen teeth. Sinking 
his fingers deeper into the puma’s throat, he 


THE MAN-EATERS 187 

squeezed it suddenly with all of his strength. 
Involuntarily, as the wind was shut off from 
her lungs, the gripping jaws relaxed enough 
to allow the scientist to pull his arm through 
them for a few inches sidewise. Again the 
puma caught the moving arm, a few inches 
lower down. Again, as the man gripped her 
throat afresh, she relaxed her hold, and he 
gained an inch or so before the sharp teeth 
clamped tight again. Inch by inch, the pro¬ 
fessor worked the full length of his arm 
through the fierce jaws which, in spite of 
the khaki sleeve and thick shirt beneath, 
pierced and crushed terribly the tense mus¬ 
cles of his arm. 

Throughout the struggle the tawny beast 
kept up a continual grunting, choking snarly 
while the man fought in utter silence. At last 
the whole length of the professor’s left arm 
had been dragged through, until only his hand 
itself was in the mouth of the puma. Shoving 
it down her hot gullet, he gripped the base of 
her tongue so chokingly that the struggling 
panther was unable to close her jaws, and, for 
the first time during the fight, the professor 


188 THE INCA EMERALD 


was free from the pain of her piercing teeth. 

In a desperate struggle to release the grip 
which was shutting off her breath, the puma 
lurched over and fell full length on her back 
in the loose sand, dragging the man down 
with her, and the professor found himself 
with his left hand deep in her gullet, his 
right hand still clutching the beast’s throat 
desperately, while his knees, with the weight 
of his body back of them, pressed full against 
her ribs on each side. As they struck the 
ground he sank his elbows into the armpits 
of the puma beneath him, spreading her front 
legs and pinning them down, sq that her 
frantic claws could reach inward only enough 
to rip his coat, without wounding the flesh 
beneath. Once on the ground, the panther 
struggled fiercely, pitching and bucking in an 
effort to release herself from the man’s 
weight so that she could be in a position to 
make use of the curved scimitars with which 
all four of her paws were armed. The loose 
sand shifted and gave her no purchase. 

As they fought, Professor Ditson felt his 
strength leaving him with the blood that 


THE MAN-EATERS 189 

flowed from his gashed and mangled arm. 
Raising himself a little, he surged down with 
both knees and felt a rib snap under his weight 
and the struggling body relax a trifle. For 
the first time he dared hope to do what no 
man had done since the cavemen contended 
with their foes among the beast-folk, and to 
his surprise noted that he was beginning to 
take a certain grim pleasure in the combat. 
The fury of the fight had pierced through the 
veneer of education and culture, and Pro¬ 
fessor Amandus Ditson, the holder of degrees 
from half a dozen learned universities, bat¬ 
tled for his life that day with a beast of the 
forest with all the desperation and fierce joy 
which any of his prehistoric forebears might 
have felt a hundred thousand years ago. 

It had become a question as to which would 
give up first—the man or the beast. Fight¬ 
ing off the waves of blackness which seemed 
to surge up and up until they threatened to 
close over his head, he fought desperately 
with clutching hands and driving knees, under 
which the thin ribs of the puma snapped like 
dry branches, until at last, with a long, con- 


i 9 o THE INCA EMERALD 

vulsive shudder, the great cat stopped breath¬ 
ing. Even as he felt the tense body relax and 
become motionless under his grip, the black¬ 
ness closed over his head. 

There the rest of the party, alarmed by his 
long absence, found him an hour later. His 
gaunt body was stretched out on the dead 
panther and his right hand was sunk in the 
long fur, while his left hand and arm were 
buried to the elbow in the fierce gaping mouth 
and his bowed knees still pinned the great 
cat down. Around the dead beast and the 
unconscious man sat four black vultures. 
Thrusting forward from time to time their 
naked, red, hooded heads, they seemed about 
to begin their feast when the rescuing party 
arrived. With his face hidden in the panther’s 
tawny fur, Professor Ditson seemed as dead 
as the beast that lay beneath him. It was 
not until Hen had pried his fingers away from 
the puma’s throat and carefully drawn his 
gashed hand from the beast’s gullet that his 
eyes flickered open and his gaunt chest strained 
with a long, labored breath. 

“I was wrong,” were his first words. “The 


THE MAN-EATERS 


191 

Felis concolor does occasionally attack man. 
I ’ll make a note of it,” he went on weakly, 
“in the next edition of my zoology.” 

“I was wrong, too,” burst out Jud, pressing 
close up to the exhausted scientist and clasp¬ 
ing his uninjured hand in both of his. “I 
thought you were nothin’ but a perfesser, but 
I want to say right here an’ now that you ’re 
a man” 

The danger, however, was not yet over. 
The scratches and bites of a panther or a 
jaguar, like those of a lion or tiger, almost 
invariably cause death from blood-poisoning 
if not immediately treated. Under Professor 
Ditson’s half-whispered directions, they 
stripped off his clothes, washed away the 
blood and dirt with clear water, and then, us¬ 
ing the little surgical kit which he always wore 
at his belt, injected a solution of iodine into 
every scratch and tooth-mark. 

“It is necessary,” said the scientist, gritting 
his teeth as the stinging liquid smarted and 
burned like fire, “but I do not believe that 
life itself is worth so much suffering.” 

The rest of the party, however, did not 


i 9 2 THE INCA EMERALD 

agree with this perhaps hasty opinion, and 
persisted in their treatment until every punc¬ 
ture was properly sterilized. Then, ban¬ 
daged with great handfuls of cool sphagnum 
moss and attended by the faithful Hen Pine, 
the professor slept the clock around. While 
he was asleep, Will and Pinto slipped away 
together to see if they could not bring back 
a plump curassow from which to make broth 
for him when he finally woke up; while Jud 
and Joe, with similar good intentions, scoured 
the jungle for the best-flavored fruits they 
might find. 

Will and his companion found the birds 
scarce although they slipped through the jun¬ 
gle like shadows. As they penetrated deeper 
among the trees they were careful to walk so 
that their shadows fell directly behind them, 
which meant that they were walking in a 
straight line, along which they could return 
by observing the same precaution. As they 
reached a tiny grove of wild oranges, Will’s 
quick eye caught sight of something which 
gleamed white against the dark trunks, and the 


THE MAN-EATERS 


193 


two went over to investigate. There they 
saw a grisly sight. Coiled in a perfect cir¬ 
cle were the bones of an anaconda some fif¬ 
teen feet in length. Every vertebra and rib, 
and even the small bones of the head and the 
formidable, recurved teeth, were perfect, 
while in all the great skeleton there was 
not a fragment of flesh nor a scale of the 
skin remaining. Strangest of all, inclosed by 
the ribs of the snake was the crushed skel¬ 
eton of a large monkey, which likewise had 
been cleaned and polished beyond the skill 
of any human anatomist or taxidermist. Some 
terrible foe had attacked the great snake 
while lying helpless and torpid after its heavy 
meal and had literally devoured it alive. 
The face of the Indian was very grave as he 
looked at the gleaming bones before him, and 
he stared carefully through the adjoining 
thickets before speaking. 

“Puma bad man-eater,” he said at last; 
“cannibal-fish worse; but anicton most dan¬ 
gerous of all. He eat same as fire eats. He 
kill jaguar, sucurucu, bushmaster, alligator, 


194 THE INCA EMERALD 

Indian, white man. He afraid of nothing.” 

“What is the anicton?” inquired Will, 
frightened in spite of himself. 

Even as he spoke, from far beyond in the 
jungle came a strange, rustling whisper 
which seemed to creep along the ground and 
pass on and on through the woods like the 
hiss of spreading flames. 

“Come/’ said the Indian, briefly, “I show 
you.” And he led Will farther out into the 
jungle through which the menacing whisper 
seemed to hurry to meet them. 

Soon small flocks of plain-colored birds 
could be seen flying low, with excited twit¬ 
terings, evidently following the course of 
some unseen objects on the ground. Then 
there came a rustling through the under¬ 
brush, and, in headlong flight, an army of 
little animals, reptiles, and insects dashed 
through the jungle. Long brown wood-rats 
scuttled past, tiny jumping-mice leaped 
through the air, guiding themselves with 
their long tails, while here and there centi¬ 
pedes, small snakes, and a multitude of other 


THE MAN-EATERS 


195 

living creatures sped through the brush as if 
fleeing before a forest fire. 

Suddenly, through a corner of the jungle 
thrust the van of a vast army of black ants. 
Through the woods they moved in lines and 
regiments and divisions, while little compa¬ 
nies deployed here and there on each side of 
the main guard. Like a stream of dark lava, 
the army flowed swiftly over the ground. 
As with human armies, this one was made up 
of different kinds of soldiers, all of whom had 
different duties to perform. Most numerous 
of all were the eyeless workers, about half an 
inch in length, armed with short, but keen, 
cutting mandibles. These acted as carriers 
and laborers and reserves, and, although 
blind, were formidable by reason of their 
numbers. Larger than the workers, measur¬ 
ing a full inch in length, were the soldiers, 
with enormous square heads and mandibles 
pointed and curved like pairs of ice-tongs. 
These soldiers would drive in each mandi¬ 
ble alternately until they met in the body 
of their victim, and when they met they held. 


196 THE INCA EMERALD 

Even if the body of the ants was torn away, 
the curved clinging jaws still clinched and bit. 
With the soldiers came companies of butchers, 
whose jaws had serrated teeth which sheared 
and cut through flesh and muscle like steel 
saws. Besides these, there were laborers and 
reserve soldiers by the million. 

Pinto told Will that a large ant-army would 
take twenty-four hours to pass a given point 
even when traveling at full speed. As they 
watched this army, Will saw an exhibition of 
what it could do. A large agouti in fleeing 
before them had in some way caught its leg 
in a tangle of vines and, squealing in terror, 
tried in vain to escape. Before it could re¬ 
lease itself, the rush of the army was upon it, 
and it disappeared under a black wave of bit¬ 
ing, stinging ants, which methodically cut up 
and carried off every fragment of the animal’s 
flesh, and passed on, leaving behind only a 
picked skeleton. 

As Will watched this hurrying, resistless 
multitude, although well beyond the path of 
its advance, he felt a kind of terror, and was 


THE MAN-EATERS 


197 

relieved when the Mundurucu started back 
for camp. 

“Nothing that lives,” said Pinto, as they 
turned toward the trail, “can stand against 
the black army.” 

The next day Jud and Joe joined in the 
hunt, leaving Hen to nurse the professor. 
Following a deer trail back from the shore, 
they came to a patch of swampy woods a mile 
from the lake. There Will discovered a 
mound some five feet high made of rushes, 
rotting moss, leaves, and mold. 

“Is that a nest of ants?” he called to the 
Indian, pointing out to him the symmetrical 
hillock. 

Pinto’s face lighted up. 

“No,” he said, “that a nest of eggs. We 
dig it out, have good supper to-night.” 

“It must be some bird,” exclaimed Jud, 
hurrying up, “to make a nest like that. Prob¬ 
ably one of them South American ostriches— 
hey, Pinto?” 

“You ’ll see,” was all that the Indian would 
say as he began to dig into the soft, spongy 


198 THE INCA EMERALD 

mass. The rest of the party followed his ex¬ 
ample. By the time they had reached the 
center of the mound, digging with sticks and 
bare hands, the matted, rotting vegetation felt 
warm to the touch, and this heat increased as 
they approached the base of the nest. Down 
at the very bottom of the mound, arranged in 
a circle on a bed of moss, they found no fewer 
than twenty-four white eggs as large as those 
of a duck, but round and covered with a 
tough, parchment-like shell. 

Pinto hurriedly pouched them all in a netted 
game-bag which he had made for himself 
out of palm-fiber. 

“Want to see bird that laid those eggs?” 
he asked Jud. 

“I sure would,” returned the old trapper. 
“Any fowl that builds a five-foot incubator 
like that must be worth seein’.” 

“Rub two eggs together and she come,” 
directed Pinto, holding out his bag to 
Jud. 

Following the Indian’s suggestion, Jud un¬ 
suspectingly rubbed two of the eggs against 
each other. They made a curious, penetra- 


THE MAN-EATERS 


199 

ting, grating noise, like the squeal of chalk on 
a blackboard. 

Hardly had the sound died away, when 
from out of a near-by wet thicket there came 
a roaring bellow that shook the very ground 
they stood on, and suddenly the air was filled 
with the sweet sickly scent of musk. Jud 
turned as if stung by a fire-ant, to see a pair 
of green eyes glaring at him above the jaws 
of a great alligator which had been lurking 
in the darkness of the jungle. As it lay there 
like an enormous lizard, the dark gray of its 
armored hide hardly showed against the 
shadows. On each side of the fore part of 
the upper jaw, two cone-shaped tusks showed 
white as polished ivory, fitting into sockets in 
the lower jaw. Even as Jud looked, the up¬ 
per jaw of the vast saurian was raised straight 
up, showing the blood-red lining of the mouth 
gaping open fully three feet. Then, with 
a roar like distant thunder, the great reptile 
raised its body, as big as that of a horse, 
upon its short, squat legs, and rushed through 
the brush at Jud with a squattering gait, 
\vhich, however, carried it over the ground at 


200 THE INCA EMERALD 


a tremendous rate of speed for a creature 
eighteen feet long. 

It was Jud’s first experience with an alli¬ 
gator, and with a yell he ran down the slope 
like a race-horse. Unfortunately for him, on 
a straight line downhill an alligator can run 
faster than a man, and this one began to over¬ 
take him rapidly. As he glanced back, the 
grinning jaws seemed right at his shoulder. 

‘•Dodge him I Dodge him!” yelled Pinto. 

At first, Jud paid no attention, but ran 
straight as a deer will sometimes run between 
the rails to its death before a locomotive 
when one bound to the side would save it. 
At last, as Will and Joe also began to shout 
the same words over and over again, the 
idea penetrated Jud’s bewildered brain and 
he sprang to one side and doubled on his 
trail. His pursuer, however, specialized in 
doubling itself. Unable to turn rapidly on 
account of its great length, and seeing its prey 
escaping, the alligator curved its body and 
the long serrated tail swung over the ground 
like a scythe. The extreme end of it caught 
Jud just above the ankles and swept him of! 


THE MAN-EATERS 


201 


his feet, standing him on his head in a thorn- 
bush from which he was rescued by Pinto 
and Will, who had followed close behind. 
The alligator made no further attempt at 
pursuit, but quickly disappeared in the depths 
of a marshy thicket. 

“Whew!” said Jud, exhausted, sitting down 
on a fallen log and mopping his steaming 
face. “That was certainly a funny joke, Mr. 
Pinto. About one more of those an’ you 
won’t go any further on this trip. You ’ll 
stay right here—underground.” 

The Mundurucu was very apologetic, ex¬ 
plaining that he had not intended to do any¬ 
thing worse than startle the old man, while 
Will and Joe interceded for him. 

“He only wanted to see you run,” said the 
latter, slyly. “Nobody can run like Jud 
when he’s scared.” 

“No, boy,” objected the old trapper, “I 
was n’t exactly scared. Startled is the right 
word. It would startle anybody to have a 
monstrophalus alligator rush out of nowhere 
an’ try to swallow him.” 

“Certainly it would,” agreed Will, gravely. 


202 


THE INCA EMERALD 


“Anybody could see that you were n’t scared, 
you looked so noble when you ran.” 

Peace thus being restored, the whole party 
returned to camp, where that night Professor 
Ditson, who was feeling better, gave a long 
discourse on the difference between croco¬ 
diles, alligators, and caymans. 

“If that had been a crocodile,” he ex¬ 
plained “you would n’t be here now. There’s 
one species found in South America, and it’s 
far faster than any alligator. Look out for 
it.” 

“I most certainly will,” murmured Jud. 

That night at supper, Pinto proceeded to 
roast in the hot coals the whole clutch of alli¬ 
gator eggs except the two which Jud had 
dropped in his excitement. For the first time 
in a long life, the old trapper refused the food 
set before him. 

“I’ve et monkeys an’ dragons an’ cannibal- 
fish without a murmur,” he said, “but I draw 
the line at alligator’s eggs. They may taste 
all right, but when I think of their dear old 
mother an’ how she took to me, I’m just sen¬ 
timental enough to pass ’em up.” 


CHAPTER IX 


THE PIT 

F OR several days the treasure-hunters 
made their camp near the shores of the 
great lake, waiting for the slow healing 
of Professor Ditson’s wounds. Here and 
there, through open spaces in the forest, they 
could see the summits of mountain-ranges 
towering away in the distance, and realized 
that the long journey through the jungle was 
nearly over. Beyond the lake the trail 
stretched away along the slopes of the foot¬ 
hills, with plateaus and high pampas on one 
side and the steaming depths of the jungle on 
the other. 

One morning Professor Ditson felt so much 
better that Hen Pine, who had been acting as 
his special nurse, decided to start on an ex¬ 
pedition after fresh vegetables. Shoulder¬ 
ing his ax and beckoning to Joe, for whom 

203 


204 THE INCA EMERALD 

the giant black had a great liking, the two 
struck off from the trail beyond the lake into 
the heart of the jungle. Before long they saw 
in the distance the beautiful plume-like foli¬ 
age of a cabbage-palm outlined against the 
sky. A full seventy feet from the ground, 
the umbrella-like mass of leaves hung from 
the slim, steel-like column of the tapering 
trunk, buttressed by clumps of straight, tough 
roots, which formed a solid support to the 
stem of the tree extending up ten feet from 
the ground. It took a solid hour of chopping 
before the palm fell. When at last it struck 
the earth, Hen cut out from the heart of the 
tree’s crown a back-load of tender green 
leaves folded in buds, which made a deli¬ 
cious salad when eaten raw and tasted like 
asparagus when boiled. 

As they turned back, Joe saw something 
move in a near-by tree. Looking more closely, 
he noticed a crevice in the trunk, across which 
was stretched a dense white web. Behind 
this crouched a huge spider. Covered with 
coarse gray and reddish hairs, its ten legs had 
an expanse of fully seven; inches. The 


THE PIT 


205 


lower part of the web was broken, and in it 
were entangled two small birds about the size 
of a field-sparrow. One of them was dead, 
but the other still moved feebly under the 
body of the monster. Picking up a long 
stick, Joe started to rescue the fluttering little 
captive. 

“Look out!” shouted Hen, who was some 
distance away. “That’s a crab-spider and 
mighty dangerous.” 

Paying no attention to the other’s warn¬ 
ing, Joe with one sweep of his stick smashed 
the web and, just missing the spider, freed 
the dying bird, so that it fell to the ground. 
As he whirled his stick back for another blow, 
the terrible arachnid sprang like a tiger 
through the air, landing on the upper part of 
Joe’s bare left arm, and, with its red eyes 
gleaming, was about to sink its curved en¬ 
venomed mandibles deep in the boy’s flesh. 
Only the instinctive quickness of Joe’s mus¬ 
cles, tensed and trained by many a danger, 
saved him. With a snap of his stick he dashed 
the spider into the underbrush. 

“Did he get you?” shouted Hen, anxiously. 


2o6 THE INCA EMERALD 


“I think not,” said Joe. 

“You’d most certainly know it if he did,” 
returned the great negro, examining the boy’s 
arm closely. Although it was covered with 
loose reddish hairs from the monster, there 
was no sign of any wound. 

“That was a close call, boy,” said Hen, 
carefully blowing the hairs off Joe’s skin. 
“You am goin’ to be mighty discomfortable 
from dese ere hairs; but if he’d done bit 
you, you might have died.” 

Hen was a true prophet. Some of the short, 
hard hairs became fixed in the fine creases of 
Joe’s skin and caused an almost maddening 
itching which lasted for several days. 

The next day, for the first time since his 
meeting with the puma, Professor Amandus 
Ditson tried walking again. His left arm 
was still badly swollen and inflamed and his 
stiffened and bruised muscles gave him in¬ 
tense pain when he moved, but, in spite of 
Hen’s protests, he insisted upon limping a 
mile or so down the trail and back. 

“If a man gives in to his body,” he re¬ 
marked impatiently, when Hen remonstrated 


THE PIT 


207 


with him, “he will never get anything done. 1 ’ 

The second day he walked still farther, and 
the third day, accompanied by the faithful 
Hen, who followed him like a shadow, he 
covered several miles, exploring a path that 
ran through the jungle parallel with the trail. 

“Some one’s been along here lately, Boss,” 
said Hen, pointing out freshly broken twigs 
and marks in the earth. 

“Probably the same hunting-party that we 
met before,” returned the professor, indiffer¬ 
ently. “They won’t—” He broke off his 
sentence at the sound of a little sick, wailing 
cry, which seemed to come from the thick 
jungle close at hand. 

“What’s that?” said Hen, sharply, raising 
his heavy machete. 

Without answering, the scientist turned 
off the trail and, raising the bushes, exposed 
the emaciated body of a little Indian girl 
about four years old. A tiny slit in the side 
of each nostril showed her to be a member 
of the Araras, a friendly tribe of forest In¬ 
dians akin to the Mundurucus, to whom 
Pinto belonged. As she looked up at Pro- 


208 THE INCA EMERALD 


lessor Ditson, her sunken face broke into a 
smile. 

‘'White man!” she whispered, in the Arara 
dialect which both Professor Ditson and 
Pinto understood. Then, pointing to herself 
with fingers so wasted that they looked like 
birds’ claws, she whispered her own name, 
“Ala,” the Indian name for those gentle, 
beautiful little birds which Europeans have 
christened “wood-stars.” 

The stern face of the scientist softened to 
an expression that even Hen had never seen 
there before. In spite of his injured arm, 
it was Professor Ditson who lifted up the 
little girl and carried her back to the camp. 
There the rest of the party found them when 
they returned with one of the plump curas- 
sows which Pinto generally mananged to 
bring back from every hunt. From this, Hen 
Pine hurriedly made hot, nourishing broth, 
with which the professor slowly fed the 
starved child until she dropped off to sleep, 
holding tightly to one of his long gaunt fingers. 
Several hours later the little girl woke up, 
seeming at first much stronger, and at once 


THE PIT 


209 


began to talk in a little voice faint as the chirp 
of a distant cricket. From her half-whis¬ 
pered sentences the professor learned that her 
father and mother had both been killed in 
a foray of the Muras. Not many months 
after their death, Ala herself had fallen sick 
of one of the forest fevers so fatal to Indian 
children, and had been abandoned by the 
tribe. 

In spite of her starved condition, Ala was 
an attractive child. Instead of the usual 
shallow, shiny black eyes of Indian children, 
hers were big and brown and fringed with 
long lashes, and when she smiled it was as 
if an inner light shone through her wan, 
pinched little face. 

At once she became the pet of the whole 
party, and although she, in turn, liked them 
all, it was Professor Ditson who always held 
first place in her heart. If he were long away 
from her, she would call plaintively, “Cariwat 
Cariwa!” the Arara word for white man. 
Sometimes she would sing, in her tiny voice, 
folk-songs which she had learned from her 
mother, all about the wonderful deeds and 



210 


THE INCA EMERALD 


doings of armadillos, agoutis, and other South 
American animals. 

Before long, however, in spite of careful 
nursing, she began to sink rapidly. Then 
came days when she sang no more, but lay 
too weak even to taste the fruits which the boys 
were always bringing in to her from the 
forest. At last one night Professor Ditson, 
who always slept close beside her, heard a 
little far-away voice whisper in his ear, 
“White man, dear, dear white man!” and felt 
the touch of her hand against his cheek. A 
moment later, under the light of the setting 
moon, he saw that Ala had gone where there 
is no more sickness nor pain and where little 
children are safe forever. 

Later on, when the rest of the party roused 
themselves before sunrise lor another day, 
they found the scientist sitting grim and im¬ 
passive in the star-shine, still holding the tiny 
cold hand of the little Indian girl in his. 
When old Jud found that clenched tightly in 
Ala’s other hand was the shell of a tree-snail, 
all white and pink and gold, which he had 
given her days before, the old man broke 


THE PIT 211 

down and sobbed as he looked at the peaceful 
little figure. 

Under the light of Achenar, Canopus, and 
the other eternal stars which flared through 
the blackness of the tropical night, they buried 
her deep at the foot of a vast paradise tree 
which had towered above the forest hundreds 
of years before the first white man ever came 
to South America and whose mighty girth 
will be standing when the last Indian of that 
continent has passed to his forgotten fathers. 
As Professor Ditson repeated over the little 
grave what part he could remember of the 
Service for the Dead, from the heart of the 
jungle sounded the deep, coughing roar of a 
jaguar as it wandered restless through the 
night. 

The next day camp was broken and once 
more the party followed the trail through the 
forest. At first the gloom and grief of the 
little Indian girl’s death hung over them all. 
Then, little by little, the healing of the forest 
began to be felt. The vast waiting trees, the 
bird-songs, the still beauty of the flowers 
all seemed to bring to them the joy and hope 


2 i 2 THE INCA EMERALD 


and faith which is the portion of wanderers 
among the solitudes and silences of earth. 

The trail still ran, a dividing line between 
the steaming jungle on one side and the pla¬ 
teaus and foot-hills on the other. Behind the 
latter towered range after range of mighty 
mountains, among whose chill heights were 
hidden forgotten Inca cities and the lost 
treasure-lake of Eldorado. On the moun¬ 
tain side of the trail the trees were set farther 
apart and belonged to families from the tem¬ 
perate zone, while here and there were small 
parks covered with short grass, with bare, 
treeless slopes beyond. 

It was in such a country, after several days 
to travel, that Pinto, Jud, and the two 
boys started on a hunt, while the others made 
camp. They had been out less than an hour 
when the sharp eyes of the old trapper spied 
two strange animals feeding in an open space 
hedged in by thickets. They had long, 
banded tails, which clanked and rattled as 
they moved. Moreover, they wore armored 
hides, set with square plates of bone and ringed 
around the middle with nine horny bands, 


THE PIT 


213 


while big pricked-up ears, like those of the 
rabbit, and long sheep eyes made them appear 
to the old trapper as among the strangest an¬ 
imals he had ever met. 

“Armadillos,” whispered Pinto, delight¬ 
edly, as he too caught sight of them. “Spread 
out and we ’ll catch ’em both. Better ’n roast 
pig to eat.” 

In a minute the four hunters had made a 
wide circle around the unwary animals. It 
was not until they were close to them that the 
pair took alarm. Stopping their feeding, 
they suddenly squatted with their fore legs off 
the ground, much as a woodchuck might do. 
Instead of curling up like porcupines and 
trusting to their armor for protection, as Jud 
had expected them to do, they suddenly 
dropped on all fours and rushed and rattled 
down the slope toward the old trapper, like 
two small armored tanks, almost as fast as a 
rabbit would run. Jud was as much surprised 
as if he had seen a tortoise start to sprint. 
Going like race-horses, they bore down upon 
the old man. 

“Hi! hi! stop! shoo!” bellowed Jud, wav- 


214 


THE INCA EMERALD 


ing both his arms over his head. “What ’ll I 
do to stop ’em?” 

“Trip ’em up,” volunteered Will, from 
where he stood. 

“Catch ’em by the tail!” yelled Joe. “Don’t 
let ’em scare you.” 

In another minute they were upon him. 
Dodging his outstreched hands, their wedge- 
shaped heads plunged between his legs. Jud’s 
feet flew up, and he sat down with a start¬ 
ling bump, while, rushing and clanking 
through the bushes, both of the armadillos 
disappeared in the depths of the thicket. 
The old man rose slowly and felt himself all 
over. 

“I’d just as soon try to stop a racing auto¬ 
mobile with my two hands as to head off a 
scared armadillo,” he observed indignantly. 
“They got no right to run that way. Their 
business is to curl up an’ be caught.” 

“Never mind, Jud,” said Will, comfort¬ 
ingly; “you had the right idea, but you tackled 
’em a mite too high.” 

That day, as they rested after lunch, Will 
wandered up toward the mountains, as usua 


THE PIT 


215 


studying his beloved birds. Along the pam¬ 
pas-like stretches of the plateaus and up 
among the hills, he found the bird life very 
different from what it was in the jungle. It 
was Pinto who taught him the bassoon notes 
of the crested screamer, changing at times 
to the long roll of a drum, and pointed out 
to him “John o’ the mud-puddles,” the South 
American oven-bird, which, unlike the north¬ 
ern bird of the same name, builds a mud nest 
a foot or more in diameter, strengthened 
with hair and weighing several pounds. The 
birds mate for life, and have a quaint habit 
of singing duets while standing facing each 
other. Then there was another bird which 
Pinto called the “fire-wood gatherer,” which 
built great nests of sticks in trees, dropping 
a wheelbarrow load of twigs under each nest. 
Of all the new birds, the boy liked the one 
called the “little cock” the best. These were 
ground-birds some nine inches long, with 
little tails that stuck straight upward, and 
bristling crests on their heads. Looking like 
small bantam roosters, they scurried around 
through the brush, following the travelers 


216 THE INCA EMERALD 


inquisitively and giving every now and then 
a loud, deep chirp. Whenever Will would 
chase one, it would scurry off, chirping with 
alarm, but always returned and followed him 
through the grass and brush. 

As the days went by, Professor Ditson 
became more and more uneasy, and, when 
camp was pitched, overtaxed his unre¬ 
stored strength by hunting through dark 
nooks in the jungle and peering and prying 
among tangles of fallen trees or the rare 
ledges of rock which showed now and then 
among the waves of green. At last he told 
the rest of the party the cause of his anx¬ 
iety. 

“In a few days more,” he said, “we shall 
begin to climb the foot-hills of Peru. Under 
my contract with Mr. Donegan, we were to 
collect a bushmaster before we began the 
search for emeralds. So I would suggest that 
we make our camp here and scatter out 
through the jungle until one of us is fortunate 
enough to discover a specimen of this rare 
and beautiful serpent. Let me beg of you, 
however,” he continued earnestly, “to use the 


THE PIT 


217 

utmost care in catching a bushmaster. They 
are easily injured.” 

Jud’s face was a study. “I will,” he 
promised. “I’ll bet there isn’t any one on 
the continent of South America who will use 
more care than me.” 

The next day the first hunt began. Armed 
with long, forked sticks, the six adventurers 
poked their way painstakingly through the 
thickest parts of the jungle, but without any 
success so far as bushmasters were concerned, 
although Pinto aroused a fine specimen of a 
boa-constrictor, one of the smaller boas of 
South America, which flowed through the 
forest like a dark shimmering stream, while 
Jud scared up another hideous iguana, it being 
a disputed question as to which ran away the 
faster. 

Toward the end of the afternoon Will 
found himself some distance from the others, 
following what seemed a little game trail, 
which zigzagged back and forth through the 
jungle. At one point it led between two 
great trees, and there Will caught sight of a 
blaze on either side of the path. As he 


218 THE INCA EMERALD 


stepped forward to examine the marks more 
carefully, a dreadful thing happened. The 
ground under his feet suddenly sank away 
without a sound, and the next moment he 
found himself at the bottom of a jug-shaped 
pit some fifteen feet deep, whose sides curved 
in so sharply that not even a monkey, much 
less a man, could climb out. The opening 
had been covered over with the stretched skins 
of animals, stitched together and cunningly 
hidden under turf and leaves. 

Although shaken and half-stunned by his 
sudden fall, the soft earth floor of the trap 
saved him from any serious injury. Far 
above he could see the light streaming in 
through the irregular hole which his weight 
had made in the covering which masked the 
pit. All too late Will realized that the blazes 
on the sides of the game path had been 
warnings for human beings to avoid the pit- 
fall which they marked. The neck of the 
great earthen bottle was some five feet in 
width, but at the base it widened into a space 
fully double that distance across. As the boy’s 
eyes became accustomed to the half-light 


THE PIT 


219 


below, he found that he could see the sides 
and the bottom of the pit more and more 
clearly, and, scrambling to his feet, he started 
to explore its full circumference. 

At the first step came a sound which no 
man born of woman has to hear more than 
once in order to stand stone-still—a fierce, 
thick hiss. Stopping dead in his tracks, Will 
moved slowly back until he was pressing 
hard against the earthen wall behind him. 
Even as he stopped, from the half-darkness 
before him, with a dry clashing of scales, 
glided into the center of the pit, with sure, 
deadly swiftness, the pinkish-yellow and 
black-banded coils of a twelve-foot serpent. 
From its eyes, with their strange oval pupils, 
a dark streak stretched to the angles of the 
mouth from which a long, forked tongue 
played like a black flame. As the fierce head 
crested the triple row of many-colored coils, 
Will saw the curious hole between eye and 
nostril, the hall-mark of a deadly clan, and 
knew that before him was the king of all the 
pit-vipers—the dreaded bushmaster. 

He stared into the lidless, fatal eyes of the 


220 THE INCA EMERALD 

snake, as they shone evilly through the dusk 
until it seemed as if his heart would stop 
beating and icy drops stood on his forehead, 
for he knew from talks had with Professor 
Ditson that bushmasters possess a most uncer¬ 
tain temper, and he feared that this one might 
instantly attack him. Once he tried to move 
to a point farther along the circumference of 
the earthen circle. At the first stir of his 
cramped muscles, the great snake hissed again 
and quivered as if about to strike. Will 
settled despairingly back, resolved to move no 
more; yet ever his thoughts kept running for¬ 
ward to the long, dark hours which were to 
come, when he would be alone through the; 
night with this terrible companion. Then if, 
overcome by sleep or cramp, he should move, 
he feared horribly to be stricken down in the 
dark by the coiled death that watched him. 

Suddenly, as he set himself against making 
the least stir of a muscle, he heard from the 
jungle through the broken covering of the 
trap, the same far-reaching whisper of death 
which had sounded when he was hunting with 


THE PIT 


221 


Pinto. A moment later, with staring eyes, he 
saw a black stream move sibilantly down the 
opposite wall of the pit, and realized that the 
blind black ants of the jungle were upon him 
-—and that there was no escape. 

Slowly the head of the moving column ap¬ 
proached the bottom of the pit, and Will re¬ 
membered in sick horror how the ants had 
torn away shred after shred of living flesh 
from the tortured body of the agouti. As the 
insatiable, inexorable mass rolled toward him, 
the bushmaster seemed either to hear or scent 
its approach. Instantly its tense coils re¬ 
laxed, and it hurried around and around three 
sides of the pit, lashing upward against the 
perpendicular walls in a vain attempt to es¬ 
cape. In its paroxysm of terror, it came so 
close to the motionless boy that its rough, 
sharp scales rippled against his legs. Only 
when the van of the ant-army actually reached 
the floor of the pit and began to encircle its 
whole circumference did the great serpent 
seem to remember Will’s presence. Then, as 
if entreating the help of a human being, it 


222 THE INCA EMERALD 

forced itself back of him, and, as the ants 
came nearer, even wound its way around 
Will’s waist in an attempt to escape. 

For a moment the fearful head towered 
level with the boy’s face. Instinctively, 
Will’s hand flashed out and caught the bush- 
master by the neck. It made no attempt to 
strike, nor even struggled under the boy’s 
choking grip; only the coiled body vibrated 
as if trembling at the approach of the deadly 
horde. For a moment the advance of the 
ant-army seemed to stop, but it was only be¬ 
cause, in accordance with its tactics, the 
head of the column began to spread out until 
the base of the pit was a solid mass of moving 
ants and the black tide lapped at Will’s very 
feet. Half-turning, and placing his ankles 
instead of his heels against the sides of the 
wall, the boy gained a few inches on the ris¬ 
ing pool of death that stretched out before 
him, while the straining body of the bush- 
master vibrated like a tuning-fork. 

By this time, the opposite wall of the pit 
was covered and the whole circle of the base 


THE PIT 


223 


of the cone-shaped pit black and moving, ex¬ 
cept the little arc where Will stood. The 
ants were so close that he could see the mon¬ 
ster heads of the leaders, and the pit was full 
of the whisper of their moving bodies flow¬ 
ing forward. Will shut his eyes and every 
muscle of his tense body quivered as if al¬ 
ready feeling their ripping, shearing man¬ 
dibles in his flesh. 

Just as the front line of the fatal legion 
touched his shoes, something struck him on 
the head, and he opened his eyes to see a 
liana dangling in front of him, while the light 
at the entrance of the pit was blurred by old 
Jud’s head and shoulders. With his free 
hand, Will reached forward and seized the 
long vine, to find it ending in a bowline-knot 
whose noose never gives. 

“Slip it under your arms,” called down the 
old trapper, hoarsely, “an’ hang on! We’ll 
pull you up.” 

It was the work of only a second to carry 
out the old man’s instructions. Thrusting the 
loop over his head and under his arms, the 


224 THE INCA EMERALD 

boy gripped the tough vine with his left hand 
and tightened his cluch around the unresist¬ 
ing body of the great bushmaster. 

“I won’t leave you behind for those black 
devils,” he murmured, as if the snake under¬ 
stood, and tugged at the liana rope as a sig¬ 
nal that he was ready to start. In an instant 
he was hauled aloft, just as the ants swarmed 
over the space where he had stood. Fend¬ 
ing himself off from the slanting walls with 
his feet, Will went up with a rush and 
through the opening at the top almost as fast 
as he had entered it. Close to the rope stood 
old Jud, with face chalky-white as he watched 
the army of ants pouring down into the pit, 
while Hen, Joe, and Pinto, and even Profes¬ 
sor Ditson, hauled with all their might on the 
vine. 

Jud had become uneasy at Will’s long ab¬ 
sence and had tracked him to the entrance 
of the trap just as the army-ants reached it. 
His shouts had brought the rest, and it was 
Hen Pine who, with his machete, had cut 
the supple liana and knotted the noose which 
had reached Will just in time. Directed by 


THE PIT 


225 


Jud, his rescuers hauled on the vine so vigor¬ 
ously that the boy shot out of the pit and was 
dragged several yards along the ground be¬ 
fore they knew that he was safe. 

Jud hurried to help him up, but promptly 
did a most creditable performance in the 
standing-back broad-jump. 

“Bring your machete here, quick!” he 
shouted to Hen; “a bushmaster’s got the 
kid!” 

“No,” corrected Will, scrambling to his 
feet with some difficulty and waving off Hen 
with his unoccupied hand, “the kid’s got a 
bushmaster.” 

Professor Amandus Ditson was delighted 
to his heart’s core. 

“That is the finest specimen of the Lachesis 
mutus” he remarked, as he unwound the 
rough coils from Will’s waist, “that has ever 
been reported. Whatever happens now,” he 
went on, relieving Will of his burden, “the 
trip is an unqualified success.” 

“The man’s easily satisfied,” murmured 
Jud, watching from a safe distance the pro¬ 
fessor grip the snake by the back of its neck 


226 THE INCA EMERALD 


and push it foot by foot into a long snake-bag 
which he always carried for possible speci¬ 
mens. When at last the bag, filled with 
snake, was tied tightly, it looked much like 
a long, knobby Christmas-stocking. The pro¬ 
fessor swung it carelessly over his shoulder 
like a blanket-roll. 

“No snake ever bites through cloth,” he re¬ 
marked reassuringly. “Now for the Inca 
Emerald!” 


CHAPTER X 


SKY BRIDGE 

A T the end of their next day’s journey 
the Trail began to swing away from 
the jungle, and thereafter led ever 
upward, skirting the foot-hills of the 
mountain-ranges beyond which lay the lost 
cities of the Incas. Three days after Will’s 
escape from the pit he found himself once 
more in terrible danger. During the siesta 
period at noon he had walked away from the 
rest of the party to see what new birds he 
might find. Not far from the camping-spot 
he came to a place where a colony of crested 
black-and-gold orioles had built long, hang¬ 
ing nests of moss and fiber among the branches 
of a low tree. 

Curious to see whether their eggs looked 
like the scrawled and spotted ones of the 
Northern orioles, Will started to climb the 
227 


228 THE INCA EMERALD 


tree. Before he was half-way to the nests, a 
cloud of clamoring birds were flying around 
his head, and as he looked up he noticed for 
the first time, directly above him, a great 
gray wasps’ nest. Even as he looked, one of 
the circling birds brushed against it, and a 
cloud of enormous red wasps poured out 
They paid no attention whatever to the birds, 
but flew down toward Will, who was already 
scrambling out of the tree at full speed. 

Even as he reached the ground, two of the 
wasps settled on his bare arm, and instantly 
he felt as if he had been stabbed by red-hot 
daggers. Never in his life had the boy 
known such agony. Trembling with pain, 
he brushed the fierce insects off and rushed 
at top speed toward the camp. In spite of 
the heat, a racking chill seized him as he ran. 
His teeth chattered together and waves of 
nausea seemed to run over his whole body, 
dimming his eyes and making his head swim. 
He just managed to reach the rest of the 
party when he staggered and fell. 

“I’ve been stung by some big red hornets,” 


SKY BRIDGE 229 

he murmured, and dropped back un¬ 
conscious. 

“It’s the maribundi wasp,” said Pro¬ 
fessor Ditson, looking very grave as he 
helped Hen undress the boy and sponge his 
tortured body with cold water. “Three of 
their stings have been known to kill a man.” 

By evening Will was delirious. All night 
long Hen and the scientist worked over him, 
and by the next day he was out of danger, 
although still in great pain and very weak. 
It was several days before he could walk, and 
then only with the greatest difficulty. At 
first every step was an agony; but Professor 
Ditson assured him that regular exercise was 
the best way to free his system from the ef¬ 
fect of the maribundi venom. 

Once again death which had dogged the 
adventurers’ trail for so long peered out at 
them. They had finished the first stage of 
their day’s walk, and Will was lying white 
and sick under a tree, trying to gain strength 
enough to go on. Ahead of them stretched 
a wide river, with a ford showing, down to 


230 THE INCA EMERALD 

which the Trail led. Suddenly from the 
depths of the near-by jungle came a horrid 
scream, followed by a chorus of baying notes 
something between the barking of a dog and 
the howl of a wolf. As the travelers sprang 
to their feet, a shower of blood-red arrows, 
with saw-edged points and barbs fashioned 
from flinty strips of palm-wood, dropped all 
around them. Again the wailing, terrible 
cry broke the silence. 

“It’s the jaguar-scream—the war-cry of 
the Miranhas,” said Professor Ditson quietly. 
“They are on our trail with one of their packs 
of wild dogs.” 

Even as he spoke, from the forest far be¬ 
low them a band of Indians broke into the 
open. Ahead of them raced a pack of tawny 
brown dogs nearly as large as the timber- 
wolves of the North. 

Hen unsheathed his great machete, while 
Jud fumbled with the holster of his auto¬ 
matic. 

“No! no!” said Professor Ditson sharply. 
“We can stand them off better across the 
river. Hurry!” 


SKY BRIDGE 


231 

Without a word, Hen picked up Will’s 
limp body and raced ahead of the others 
around a bend in the trail which hid them 
all for a moment from the sight of their pur¬ 
suers. At the river the scientist suddenly 
halted, after a long look at the rapids which 
ran deep and swift on each side of the ford. 

“Don’t splash as you go through,” he said 
quietly. “I ’ll come last.” 

One by one, the little party, headed by 
Hen with Will in his arms, waded carefully 
through the shallow water. As they went 
Jud thought that he caught glimpses in the 
river of the squat, fierce forms of the dreaded 
piranhas, but if they were there they paid no 
attention to the men, who crossed with the ut¬ 
most care. Just as Professor Ditson, the last 
of the party to leave the bank, stepped into 
the stream, there sounded with startling dis¬ 
tinctness the same wild chorus which had 
come from the jungle. Once or twice in a 
life-time a hunter in South American forests 
hears the fearsome screech which a jaguar 
gives when it is fighting for its life or its mate. 
It was this never-to-be-forgotten sound which 


232 THE INCA EMERALD 

the Miranhas had adopted for their war-cry. 

Down the slope not three hundred yards 
away came the hunting pack. Right behind 
them, running nearly as fast as they, raced a 
band of some fifty Miranhas warriors. As 
the fugitives looked back it was not the near¬ 
ness of the wild-beast pack nor the fierce 
band of Indian warriors rushing down upon 
them which struck the color from the faces 
of Will and Joe. It was the towering figure 
of a man with a black bar of joined eyebrows 
across his forehead and a scar on his cheek 
which twisted his face into a fixed, malignant 
grin. 

“Scar Dawson!” muttered Will. 

“Scar Dawson!” echoed Joe, despairingly. 

As they spoke the outlaw seemed to re¬ 
cognize them too, for he waved aloft a 
Miranha bow which he carried, and shouted 
hoarsely. By the time they reached the 
other bank, Will lay half-fainting in Hen’s 
arms. 

“Fellows,” he whispered, “I’m all in. 
Hide me in the bushes here, and you go on. 


SKY BRIDGE 


233 

There’s no sense in all of you sacrificing 
yourselves for me.” 

“We stay,” murmured Joe, while Hen 
nodded his head and Pinto fitted one of his 
fatal little arrows into his blow-gun. 

“Sure, we ’ll stay,” chimed in Jud, unsling¬ 
ing his automatic, “an’ there’s seven Injuns 
who ’ll stay too unless I’ve forgotten how to. 
shoot. But what in the world’s the perfes- 
ser doin’?” he went on, peering out over 
the river. 

Unheeding the tumult of howls and 
screeches behind him, or the rush of the 
fierce hounds and fiercer men toward him, 
the eminent scientist was picking his way 
carefully through the ford. At the middle 
of the river, where the water ran deepest, he 
rolled up his left sleeve, and with his hunt¬ 
ing-knife unconcernedly made a shallow 
gash through the skin of his lean, muscular 
forearm. As the blood followed the blade 
he let it drip into the running water, moving 
forward at the same time with long, swift 
strides. Almost in a moment the river be- 


234 THE INCA EMERALD 

low the ford began to bubble and boil with 
the same rush of the fatal hordes which had 
so horrified Jud and Will at the Lake of the 
Man-eaters. As Professor Ditson sprang 
from the water to the edge of the farther 
bank, the water clear across the river seemed 
alive with piranhas. Unmoved, he turned to 
the rest of the party. 

“That ford is locked,” he said precisely. 
“For three hours it can not be crossed by 
man or beast.” 

Even as he spoke, the wild-dog pack 
splashed into the river. As they reached the 
deeper water and began to swim, the flash 
of hundreds of yellow-and-white fish showed 
ahead of them. In an instant the water bub¬ 
bled like a caldron gleaming with myriads of 
razor-edged teeth. There was a chorus of 
dreadful howls as, one by one, the fierce dogs 
of the jungle sank below the surface, stripped 
skeletons almost before their bodies reached 
the bottom of the river. From the farther 
bank came a chorus of wailing cries as the 
warparty watched the fate of their man-hunt¬ 
ing pack. Then, as if at some signal, the 


SKY BRIDGE 


23S 

whole band threw themselves on their backs 
on the ground. Only the towering figure of 
the giant outlaw remained erect. 

“What’s happened to those chaps?” queried 
Jud, much perplexed. “I’ve been with In¬ 
juns nigh on to forty year, but I never see a 
war-party act that way.” 

As he spoke, Professor Ditson reached the 
summit of the slope where the rest of the 
party were standing, and saw the prostrate 
band on the other side of the river. 

“Hurry oyt of here!” he said sharply, rac¬ 
ing around a bend in the trail, followed by 
the others. 

Their retreat was none too soon. Even as 
they started, each of the men of their far¬ 
away pursuers braced both his feet expertly 
against the inside horn of his bow, and fitting 
a five-foot arrow on the string, pulled with all 
the leverage of arms and legs combined, until 
each arrow was drawn nearly to its barbed 
point. There was a deep, vibrating twang 
that could be heard clearly across the river, 
and into the sky shot a flight of roving shafts. 
Up and up they went until they disappeared 


236 THE INCA EMERALD 

from sight, only to come whizzing down 
again from a seemingly empty sky, with 
such force and accuracy that they buried 
themselves deep into the ground just where 
the fugitives had been a minute before. 

Jud, who had lingered behind the others, 
had a narrow escape from being struck by one 
of the long shafts. 

‘We’d have all looked like porcupines if 
we’d stayed there thirty seconds longer,” he 
remarked to Joe, as he joined the rest of the 
party. “Them Miranhas are sure the dandy 
shots with a bow.” 

“Huh!” returned Joe jealously, “that noth¬ 
ing. My uncle out in Akotan, where I come 
from, he kill a man with an arrow half a 
mile away, and no use his feet either.” 

“That uncle of yours was some performer 
with a bow,” returned Jud cautiously. “Half 
a mile is good shootin’ even with a rifle.” 

“Some performer is right,” chimed in Will 
weakly. “I learned long ago, when Joe and 
I were up by Wizard Pond, that that uncle of 
his held a world record in everything.” 


SKY BRIDGE 


237 

“Set me down, Hen,” he went on. “I think 
I can do a mile or so on my own legs.” 

“From here on Pinto and I have been over 
this route,” announced Professor Ditson. 
“Ten miles farther on is ‘Sky Bridge.’ If we 
can cross that and cut it behind us, we ’re 
safe.” 

Two by two, the members of the party took 
turns in helping Will along the Trail, which 
soon widened into a stone-paved road. 

“This is one of the Inca highways,” ex¬ 
plained the scientist. “It leads from their 
first city clear to the edge of the jungle. 
Once,” he went on, “the Incas ruled an em¬ 
pire of over a million square miles, equal to 
the whole United States east of the Missis¬ 
sippi River; but they never were able to con¬ 
quer the jungle.” 

The road sloped up more and more steeply, 
and the going became increasingly difficult, 
but Professor Ditson hurried them on re¬ 
morselessly. 

“The Miranhas never give up a chase,” he 
said, “and if they have succeeded in crossing 


238 THE INCA EMERALD 

the river above or below the ford, they may 
even now be hard on our heels.” 

Before long they were in a wilderness of 
bare, stern peaks whose snow-covered sum¬ 
mits towered high against the horizon. At 
times the road zigzagged along narrow 
shelves cut in the faces of precipices and 
guarded here and there by low retaining- 
walls built of cut stones laid without mortar, 
but so perfectly that the blade of a knife could 
not be thrust between them. The air became 
colder, and the scientist told them that often 
the temperature in these mountain-valleys 
would vary as much as one hundred degrees 
within twenty-four hours. 

As they approached the crest of a great 
ridge which towered above them, Jud began 
to find great difficulty in breathing and com¬ 
plained of nausea and a feeling of suffo¬ 
cation. 

“It’s the soroche, the mountain-sickness,” 
explained Professor Ditson. “It will pass 
soon.” 

“I’m the one that’s goin’ to pass—pass 
out,” panted Jud. 


SKY BRIDGE 


239 

Soon he became so exhausted that, like Will, 
he had to be half-carried along the trail. 

“You an’ me are a fine pair to fight Injuns,” 
he whispered to the boy, who smiled wanly in 
reply. 

Beyond the ridge the road ran downward 
toward a vast gorge. From its dark depths 
rose and fell at intervals the hoarse, roaring 
bellow of a river rushing among the rocks a 
thousand feet below. 

“It is Apurinac, the Great Speaker,” said 
Pinto. 

As the trail led downward again, Jud be¬ 
gan to feel better, and before long he was able 
to walk without any help. 

At length, far below them, looking like a 
white thread against the threatening black¬ 
ness of the canon, they saw swinging in the 
wind a rude suspension bridge of the kind 
which travelers had used in these mountains 
ever since the days of the Incas. When Pinto, 
who knew the bridge well, learned that Pro¬ 
fessor Ditson intended to cross it at once, he 
was much disturbed. 

“No one, Master,” he protested, “ever 


240 THE INCA EMERALD 

crosses it except at dawn before the wind 
comes up; nor should more than one at a time 
pass over it.” 

“To-day,” returned the scientist grimly, 
“you are going to see six men cross this bridge 
in the middle of the afternoon, wind or no 
wind; and what’s more, they are all going to 
cross together.” And he waved his hand to¬ 
ward the road along which they had come. 

Against the white side of the mountain 
which the trail skirted showed a series of 
moving black dots, while down the wind, 
faint and far away, came the tiger-scream of 
the Miranhas. They had found a way across 
the river, and once more were hard on the 
heels of the treasure-hunters. 

Along the Inca road the little party hur¬ 
ried at breakneck speed. At one place it 
ran between a vertical wall of rock and a dizzy 
precipice. Farther on it led down by rude 
stairs partly cut in the rock and partly built 
out of stones. At one point it made a sudden 
turn with a low parapet built around it in a 
semicircle to keep descending travelers from 
slipping off into the depths below from their 


SKY BRIDGE 


241 


own momentum. Once beyond this last dan¬ 
ger-point, the fugitives found themselves be¬ 
fore Sky Bridge itself. 

So deep was the canon that from the river 
a thousand feet below the bridge seemed on 
a level with the clouds and to deserve well 
its name. It was made of two thick cables, 
woven out of braided withes, which stretched 
nearly a hundred yards from bank to bank of 
the gorge. Between and below these ran 
several smaller cables, fastened to the upper 
two, which served as guard-rails. Sections 
of cane and bamboo laid transversely across 
the three lower cables, and tied on by strips 
of rawhide, formed the flooring, which swung 
four or five feet below the upper cables. 

From far below came the stern roar of the 
Speaker, and at the bottom of the sunless gulf 
gleamed the white foam of the river as it 
raged against masses of rent and splintered 
stone. Over the abyss the bridge waved 
back and forth in the gusts which all day long 
swept through the gorge. At times, when the 
frail structure caught the full force of the 
wind, it swung fully ten feet out beyond its 


242 THE INCA EMERALD 

center, hung a second, and then dropped back 
with a jar that threatened to snap the cables 
or hurl into the abyss any human being who 
was crossing the bridge. 

Not for all the treasure of the Incas would 
any one of the party have risked the crossing. 
The fear of death, however, is a great incen¬ 
tive to brave deeds. 

“I ’ll go first,” said Professor Ditson sud¬ 
denly, “and see if it is possible to get over. 
Unless we cross this bridge within the next 
fifteen minutes, we ’re all dead men.” 

Without further speaking, the scientist 
stepped out upon the swaying bridge and 
gripped the twisted cables firmly fixed in but¬ 
tresses of stone. At first he shuffled along 
with short, cautious steps. In front of him 
the footway of bamboo strips sloped away 
sharply clear down to the swaying center of 
the bridge. From far below, up through the 
mists which half hid the river, soared a bird 
the size of a pigeon. As it circled up through 
a thousand feet of space, it seemed to grow 
and grow until, by the time it reached the 
level of the bridge, rocking on mighty motion- 



It showed itself as the great condor of the Andes, the 
second largest bird that flies 













SKY BRIDGE 


243 


less wings, it showed itself as the great condor 
of the Andes, the second largest bird that 
flies. From its grim, naked head its cold 
eyes gazed evilly upon the man clinging to the 
swaying bridge, and then turned toward the 
little group huddled against the side of the 
precipice, as if counting them as additions to 
its larder of death. As the great vulture 
swept by, blotting out a stretch of sky as it 
passed, the wind hissed and sang through the 
quills of its enormous wings, taut and stiff as 
steel. Rocking, swaying, perfectly balanced 
in the rush of air that howled down the canon, 
the bird circled over the bridge, and then, 
without a flap of its vast wings, dipped down 
into the depths below until, dwindling as it 
went, it disappeared in the spray of the pris¬ 
oned river. To the travelers, no other sight 
could so have plumbed the depths that lay be¬ 
neath the bridge. For a moment the scien¬ 
tist, sick and giddy, clung to the swaying cables 
which seemed to stretch tenuous as cobwebs 
across the sheer blackness of the abyss. 

“Come back, Master,” called Pinto. “No 
man can cross that bridge!” 


244 THE INCA EMERALD 

“No man here will live who does n’t cross 
this bridge,” returned the professor, as the 
wind brought again to their ears the war-cry 
of the Miranhas. 

Bending double and clinging desperately to 
the ropes woven from tough maguey fiber, he 
edged his way down the swaying slope, while 
the others watched him as if fascinated. At 
times the full force of the wind as it was 
sucked through the long canon swung the 
bridge out so far that he had to lie flat and 
cling for his very life’s sake. When, at last, 
he reached the lowest part of the curve, in¬ 
stead of climbing up to the safety of the op¬ 
posite shore, the scientist deliberately turned 
around and, taking advantage of every lull 
and pause in the sudden gusts which bore 
down upon him, began the long steep, slippery 
climb back to the point from which he had 
started. 

“He’s riskin’ his life twice to show us the 
way,” said old Jud, suddenly. “Come on! 
I’m more ashamed to stay than I’m scared 
to cross.” 

Foot by foot, clinging desperately to the 


SKY BRIDGE 


245 


sagging, straining cables, Professor Ditson 
fought his way back. When at last he re¬ 
gained the safety of the cliff-side, his face was 
white and drawn, and he was dripping 
with sweat, while his hands were bleeding 
from the chafing of the ropes; but there was 
a compelling gleam in his eyes, and his voice, 
when he spoke, was as precise and level as 
ever. 

“I have proved that it is perfectly possible 
to go over this bridge in safety, and I believe 
that the cables are strong enough to hold the 
weight of us all,” he said. “I will go first; 
Hen will go last. Don’t look down. Hang 
on. Watch the man ahead, keep on going, 
and we ’ll get over—just in time.” 

He stretched his gaunt arm toward the trail, 
where now the Miranha band was in plain 
sight not half a mile away! 

Again he turned and started out over the 
bridge, which swayed and swung above the 
death that roared far below. Without a word, 
but with teeth clinched grimly, Jud tottered 
after him, his long gray beard blowing in the 
wind. Next came Pinto, shaking with fright, 


246 THE INCA EMERALD 

but with a habit of obedience to his master 
stronger than his own conviction that he was 
going to his doom. Joe followed; and be- 
tween him and Hen, who brought up the rear, 
was Will. As the full force of the wind 
struck the swinging structure, now loaded 
with their united weight, the taut cables and 
ropes creaked and groaned ominously, while 
now and again some weakened fiber would 
snap with a sudden report like a pistol-shot. 

Down and down the first terrible incline 
crept the little train of desperate men. There 
were times when the bridge would swing so 
far out that only by clinging and clawing des¬ 
perately at the guard-rope could the travelers 
keep from being tipped into the depths below. 
When that happened, each would grip the one 
next to him and, with linked arms and legs, 
they would make a human chain which gave 
and swung and held like the bridge itself. At 
last they reached the low-swung center of 
the bridge, and caught the full force of the 
wind, which howled down the gorge like a 
wolf. For a long minute they lay flat on their 


SKY BRIDGE 


247 

faces as the bridge swung forth and back like 
a pendulum. 

As the gust passed, they heard close at hand 
the tiger-screech of the Miranhas rushing at 
headlong speed down the trail as they saw 
their prey once again escaping. Up the far¬ 
ther slope, crouching low and gripping des¬ 
perately with twining hands and feet, the fug¬ 
itives pressed on foot by foot. At the worst 
places Will felt Hen’s mighty arms holding 
him tight to the swinging ropes, while from 
ahead Joe risked his life time and again to 
stretch out a helping hand to his friend. 

By inches, by feet, by yards, they wormed 
their way up, until Professor Ditson was able 
to get a firm foothold on the side of the cliff, 
where a narrow path had been cut in the 
living rock. Even as he struggled to his 
feet, the war-party dashed around the sharp 
curve that led to the entrance of the bridge. 

With all their courage and relentless vin¬ 
dictiveness, the Miranha band yet hesitated to 
cross where the white men had gone. As Jud 
and Pinto joined Professor Ditson on the 


248 THE INCA EMERALD 

little platform of rock which towered above 
the canon, they saw their pursuers actually 
turn their heads away from the deep that 
opened at their feet, after one glance along 
the narrow swaying bridge by which alone 
it could be crossed. Then, with a fierce yell, 
they dropped their bows and, whipping out 
long, narrow-bladed knives from their belts, 
fell like furies upon the tough woven cables 
anchored among the rocks. It was Jud who 
first realized that they were trying to cut the 
bridge. 

“Hurry for your life!” he called down to 
Joe, who, holding on to Will with one hand, 
was slowly hauling himself up the last few 
feet of the steep ascent. Even as he spoke, 
the taut cables began to quiver and sing like 
violin-strings transmitting with fatal clear¬ 
ness every cut and slash and chop of the de¬ 
stroyers at the other end. Will was half-faint¬ 
ing with the strain of the crossing, which his 
weakened body was not fitted to endure long. 
Jud’s shout seemed to pierce the mist of un¬ 
consciousness which was slowly closing over 


SKY BRIDGE 


249 

his head, and he struggled upward with all 
his might. 

In another minute Joe was near enough to 
be reached by the party on the landing, and 
three pairs of sinewy arms gripped him and 
pulled him upward, clinging to Will as he 
rose. Below him, Hen, bracing both feet, 
heaved the boy upward with the full force of 
his mighty arms. Just as Will reached the 
refuge of the cliff, with an ominous snapping 
noise the bridge began to sag and drop. Hen 
gave a desperate spring and wound one arm 
around a little pinnacle of rock which stood 
as a hawser-post for one of the cables, while 
Pinto and Joe gripped his other arm in mid¬ 
air, and pulled him to safety just as the far 
end of the bridge swished through the air 
under the knife-strokes of the Indians! 

As, doubled by its drop, the full weight of 
the structure fell upon the strained cables, 
they snapped like threads and cables, ropes 
and footway rushed down into the abyss with a 
hissing roar which died away in the dim 
depths a thousand feet below. 


CHAPTER XI 


THE LOST CITY 


H ARDLY had the rumble of the fall¬ 
ing bridge passed when Jud slipped 
his arm about Will’s shoulders and 
half-led half-dragged the fainting boy around 
the corner of a great rock. 

“Those yellin’ devils shoot too straight for 
us to take any chances,” he remarked briefly. 

The same idea had come to the rest of the 
party, and they followed hard on the old trap¬ 
per’s heels. Here Professor Ditson again 
took the lead. 

“It ’ll take them some time to get across that 
river, now the bridge is down, if they follow 
us,” he observed with much satisfaction. 
“We ought to reach Machu Pichu to-day and 
Yuca Valley in two days more. There we ’ll 
be safe.” 

“What’s Machu Pichu, Chief?” questioned 

250 


THE LOST CITY 


251 


Jud, using this title of respect for the first 
time; for the professor’s behavior at the 
bridge had made an abiding impression on 
the old man’s mind. “It was the first city that 
the people of the Incas built,” explained Pro¬ 
fessor Ditson. 

“When the Inca clan first led their followers 
into these mountain valleys, they were attacked 
by the forest-dwellers and driven back into 
the mountains. There they built an impreg¬ 
nable city called Machu Pichu. From there 
they spread out until they ruled half the con¬ 
tinent. Only the forests and the wild tribes 
that infested them they never conquered. At 
the height of the Inca Empire,” went on the 
scientist, “Machu Pichu became a sacred city 
inhabited mostly by the priests. After the 
Spanish Conquest it was lost for centuries to 
white men until I discovered it a few years 
ago.” 

“Where do we go from Yuca?” questioned 
Jud again. 

“Follow the map to Eldorado,” returned 
the Professor, striding along the path like an 
ostrich. 


252 THE INCA EMERALD 

Beyond the rock, and out of sight of the 
canon, gaped the mouth of a tunnel fully 
three hundred yards in length. Narrow slits 
had been chiseled through the face of the prec¬ 
ipice for light and air, and although cut out of 
the living rock with only tools of hardened 
bronze by the subjects or captives of forgotten 
Incas, it ran as straight and true as the tunnels 
of to-day drilled by modern machinery under 
the supervision of skilled engineers. Through 
the slits the adventurers caught glimpses of 
the towering peak down which they had come, 
but there was no sign of their pursuers. In 
a moment they had vanished from the 
naked rock-face against which they had 
swarmed. 

Joe stared long through one of the window- 
slits, while below sounded the hoarse, sullen 
voice of the hidden river. 

“I not like their going so soon,” he confided 
at last to Jud. “Perhaps that Dawson have 
another secret way down the mountain, as he 
did at Wizard Pond.” 

“It’s not likely,” returned Professor Ditson, 
who had overheard him. “At any rate, the 


THE LOST CITY 


253 

only thing to do is to press on as fast as pos¬ 
sible.” 

“Why did n’t my snake-skin make us safe 
from those people?” inquired Joe, as they 
hurried along. 

“Because,” explained the scientist, “the 
Miranhas are an outlaw tribe who have no 
religion and keep no faith. Nothing is sacred 
to them.” 

Beyond the tunnel a wide pavemented road 
led around the rear of the mountain and then 
up and up and in and out among a wilderness 
of peaks, plateaus, cliffs, and precipices. 

In spite of the well-paved path along which 
in the old days the Incas had sent many an 
expedition down into the Amazon Valley, the 
progress of the party was slow. Will became 
rapidly weaker and for long stretches had to 
be helped, and even carried along the more 
difficult parts of the path. 

Hour after hour went by. Once they 
stopped to eat and rest, but their tireless leader 
hurried them on. 

“We ’re not safe on this side of Machu 
Pichu,” he said. 


254 THE INCA EMERALD 

Will pulled himself to his feet. 

“I’m the one who’s keeping you all back,” 
he said weakly. “From now on I walk on 
my own legs!” And, in spite of the others’ 
protests, he did so, forcing his numbed nerve- 
centers to act by sheer strength of will. To¬ 
ward the middle of the afternoon the path 
turned an elbow of rock, and in front of them 
towered a chaos of grim and lonely peaks, 
spiring above canons and gorges which 
seemed to stretch down to the very bowels of 
the earth. In the background were range 
after range of snow-capped mountains, white 
as the clouds banked above them, while in 
front showed a nicked knife-edge of dark 
rock. The professor’s face lightened as he 
looked. 

“On that ridge,” he said, stretching out his 
arm, “lies the Lost-City!” 

The path led downward until, although it 
was early afternoon, it became dim twilight 
in the depths of dark canons, and then, twist¬ 
ing like a snake, came back to the heights, 
skirting the edges of appalling precipices in a 
series of spirals. As the way reached the sum- 


THE LOST CITY 255 

mit of the ridge it became narrower and nar¬ 
rower, and at intervals above it stood stone 
watch-towers on whose ramparts were ar¬ 
ranged rows of great boulders with which the 
sentinels of the Incas could have swept an in¬ 
vading army down to destruction in a mo¬ 
ment. The path ended at last in a flight of 
steps cut out of the solid rock, with a wall on 
each side, and so narrow that not more than 
two could walk up them abreast. It was past 
sunset when the little party reached the last 
step and stood on the summit of the wind¬ 
swept ridge. In the east the full moon was 
rising above the mountains and flooded the 
heights with light white as melting snow. 

Before them stretched the city of Machu 
Pichu, its shadows showing in the moonlight 
like pools of spilled ink. Lost, lonely, de¬ 
serted by men for half a thousand years, the 
great city had been the birth-place of the 
Incas, who ruled mightily an empire larger 
than that which Babylon or Nineveh or 
Egypt held in their prime. In its day it had 
been one of the most impregnable cities of the 
world. Flanked by sheer precipices, it was 


256 THE INCA EMERALD 

reached only by two narrow paths enfiladed 
by watch-towers, eyries, and batteries of 
boulders. To-night the terraces were solitary 
and the strange houses of stone and vast rock- 
built temples empty and forsaken. 

In the moonlight this gray birth-place of an 
empire lay before the travelers from another 
age, silent as sleep, and, as they passed through 
its deserted streets, the professor told them 
in a half-whisper thousand-year-old legends 
which he had heard from Indian guides. At 
the far side stood the great watch-tower 
Sacsahuaman, guarding the other path, 
which spiraled its way up the slope of a sheer 
precipice half a mile high. 

“The Inca who built that,” said the pro¬ 
fessor, “gave the tower its name. It means 
Triend of the Falcon,’ for the Inca boasted 
that the hawks would feed full on the shat¬ 
tered bodies of any foe who tried to climb 
its guarded heights.” 

On the summit of a sacred hill he showed 
them a square post carved out of the top of 
a huge rock whose upper surface had been 
smoothed and squared so that the stone pillar 


THE LOST CITY 


2 57 


made a sun-dial which gave the time to the 
whole city. Near by lay Sayacusca, the 
“Tired Stone,” a vast monolith weighing a 
thousand tons, which was being dragged to 
the summit by twenty thousand men when it 
stuck. As the carriers struggled to move 
its vast bulk, it suddenly turned over and 
crushed three hundred of them. Convinced 
that they had offended some of the gods, the 
stone was left where it fell, and the skeletons 
of its victims are beneath it to this day. 

High above the rest of the city was the 
sacred Sun Rock. From it the sun itself was 
believed to rise, nor might it be touched 
by the foot of bird, beast, or man. At the 
height of the Inca Empire it was plated all 
over with gold, which the Peruvians believed 
fell to the earth as the tears of the sun, and 
with emeralds and, except during the Festival 
of the Sun, covered with a golden-yellow veil. 
To-day its glory had departed, and the tired 
travelers saw before them only a frayed and 
weather-worn mass of red sandstone. 

Seated on its summit, the scientist showed 
them the street where, during the Festival of 


258 THE INCA EMERALD 

the Sun, the Inca would ride along a pave¬ 
ment made of ingots of silver on a horse whose 
mane was strung with pearls and whose shoes 
were of gold. Beyond the Sun Rock was the 
Snake Temple, which had three windows and 
whose solid stone walls were pierced with 
narrow holes through which the sacred snakes 
entered to be fed by the priests. 

“We might camp there,” suggested Pro¬ 
fessor Ditson. “It would make a large, com¬ 
fortable house.” 

“No, no,” objected Jud shudderingly. 
“No snake temple for me.” 

They finally compromised on Sacsahuaman, 
whose thick walls were slit here and there by 
narrow peep-holes and whose only entrance 
was by a narrow staircase of rock cut out of 
the cliff and guarded, like most of the entrance 
staircases, by rows of heavy boulders arranged 
along the ledge. Inside were long benches 
of solid stone, and, best of all, at the base of 
a white rock in the center of the tower 
trickled an ice-cold spring whose water ran 
through a little trough in the rock as it had 
run for a thousand years. Professor Ditson 


THE LOST CITY 


259 

told them that in the old days it had always 
been kept guarded and munitioned as a for¬ 
tress where the Incas could make a last stand 
if by any chance the rest of the city should 
ever fall into the hands of their enemies. 

That night they kindled a fire within the 
tower, and ate their supper high above the 
sacred city on the battlements where the 
guards of the Incas had feasted a thousand 
years before Columbus discovered the New 
World. Afterward they slept, taking turns 
in guarding the two entrances to the city from 
the same watch-towers where other sentries 
had watched in the days of the beginning of 
the Inca Empire. 

The next morning Will could not move. 
The stress and strain and exertion of the day 
before had left him too weak to throw off 
the numbing effect of the virus. Professor 
Ditson shook his head as he looked him over 
carefully. 

“There is only one thing to do,” he said 
at last. “We must send on ahead and get a 
horse or a burro for him. He has walked 
too much as it is. Any more such strain might 


260 THE INCA EMERALD 

leave him paralyzed for life. Hen,” he went 
on, “you know the trail to Yuea. Take Joe 
and start at once. You ought to run across 
a band of vaqueros herding cattle long be¬ 
fore you get to the valley. Bring the whole 
troop back with you. I ’ll pay them, well, 
and they can convoy us in case the Miranhas 
are still after us.” 

A few minutes later Hen and Joe were on 
their way. Leaning over the parapet of Sac- 
sahuaman, the rest of the party watched them 
wind their way slowly down the precipice 
until they disappeared along the trail that 
stretched away through the depths of the 
canon. All the rest of that day Jud and Pinto 
and the professor took turns in standing guard 
over the two entrances to the city, and in 
rubbing Will’s legs and giving him alternate 
baths of hot and cold water, the recognized 
treatment for stings of the maribundi wasp. 

That night it was Jud’s turn to guard the 
staircase up which the party had come. Once, 
just before daybreak, he thought he heard far 
below him the rattle and clink of rolling 
stones. He strained his eyes through the 


THE LOST CITY 


261 

dark, but could see nothing, nor did he hear 
any further sounds. In order, however, to 
discourage any night prowlers, the old trapper 
dropped one of the round boulders that had 
been placed in the watch-tower for just such 
a purpose, and it went rolling and crashing 
down the path. 

Daylight showed the trail stretching away 
below him apparently empty and untrodden 
since they had used it when entering the city. 
Tired of waiting for Professor Ditson, Jud 
hurried up the steep slope to the fortress, meet¬ 
ing the scientist on the way to relieve him. 
The old trapper was just congratulating Will 
on being well enough to stand on his feet when 
a shout for help brought all three with a rush 
to the entrance of the tower. Up the steep 
slope they saw Professor Ditson running like 
a race-horse, while behind him showed the 
giant figure of Dawson, followed closely by 
half a hundred Miranhas. In another min¬ 
ute Professor Ditson was among them. 

“They must have hidden during the night 
around a bend in the path and rushed up when 
we changed guards,” he panted. “They were 


262 THE INCA EMERALD 


swarming into the tower just as I got there.” 

All further talk was stopped by the same 
dreadful tumult of war-cries that the travelers 
had learned to know so well. 

“Steady, boys,” said Jud, instantly taking 
command, as a veteran of many Indian fights. 
“Four against fifty is big odds, but we ’ve got 
a strong position. Will, you sit by the stair¬ 
case an’ if any one starts to come up, roll one 
of them fifty-pound boulders down on him, 
with my compliments. I ’ll stay back here 
where I can watch the whole wall an’ pick 
off any one that tries to climb up. Professor, 
you an’ Pinto keep back of me, with your ax 
an’ knife handy in case any of them get past 
me. Now,” he went on, as the three took their 
stations, “how about some breakfast?” 

After the first fierce chorus of yells there 
was a sudden silence. Led by Dawson, the 
Indians were far too crafty to attempt a direct 
charge up through the narrow gateway. The 
roofless walls, no longer raftered by heavy 
timbers, as in the Inca’s day, were the weak 
spot in the defense of the besieged. If enough 
of the Miranhas succeeded in scaling them in 


THE LOST CITY 263 

spite of Jud’s markmanship, the defenders of 
the fort could be overpowered by sheer weight 
of numbers. While the little party of the be¬ 
sieged were eating breakfast at their several 
stations, they could hear the sound of heavy 
objects being dragged across the paved street 
without, and the clink and jar of stone against 
the wall. Always, however, the besiegers 
kept themselves carefully out of the range of 
vision from the tower’s narrow loop-holes. 
At noon Jud insisted that Pinto cook and 
serve dinner as *usual. 

“Eat hearty, boys,” the old Indian-fighter 
said. “You may never have another chance. 
I dope it out they ’re pilin’ rocks against the 
walls an’ when they’ve got ’em high enough 
they ’ll rush us.” 

It was the middle of the afternoon before 
Jud’s prophecy was fulfilled. For some time 
there had been no sign nor sound from the 
besiegers. Then suddenly, from six differ¬ 
ent and widely separated points in the semi¬ 
circle of stone, hideous heads suddenly showed 
over the edge of the wall, and, with the tiger- 
scream of their tribe, five picked Miranha 


264 THE INCA EMERALD 

warriors started to scramble over and leap 
down upon the little party below, while at 
the end of the curved line showed the scarred, 
twisted face and implacable eyes of the out¬ 
law from the North. 

It was then that the wiry little gray-bearded 
trapper showed the skill and coolness that had 
made his name famous throughout a score of 
tribal wars which had flickered and flared 
through the Far Northwest during his trap¬ 
ping days. Standing lithe and loose, he 
swung his automatic from .his hip in a half¬ 
circle and fired three shots so quickly that 
the echo of one blended with the beginning 
of the next. Hard upon the last report came 
the pop of Pinto’s deadly blow-gun. Three 
of the besiegers toppled over dead or 
wounded, and with a dreadful shout Scar 
Dawson clawed frantically at his shoulder 
where a keen thorn of death from Pinto’s tube 
had lodged. The other two Indians scramb¬ 
led down in terror, and there came a chorus 
of appalling screams, wails, and yells from the 
other side of the thick wall. 

“I could have got ’em all,” remarked Jud 



Hideous heads suddenly showed over the edge of the wall 
























THE LOST CITY 


265 

cheerfully, polishing his smoking automatic 
on his sleeve, “but I Ve only got four car¬ 
tridges left an’ we ’re likely to need ’em later. 
Will,” he went on, “you just step over to the 
watch-tower there an’ see if there ’re any signs 
of Hen an’ Joe. A few South American cow¬ 
boys would come in mighty handy just about 
now.” 

“If they don’t come before night,” stated 
Professor Ditson calmly, “we ’re gone. The 
Miranhas are certain to rush us as soon as it 
gets dark.” 

Even as he spoke, there came from outside 
a wail, swelling to a shriek like the unearthly 
scream of a wounded horse, yet with a note 
of triumph and anticipation running through 
it. Pinto started and shivered, while Profes¬ 
sor Ditson’s face showed grim and set. 

“You ’ll have to get us first,” he muttered. 

“What do they mean by that little song?” 
inquired Jud coolly. 

“It’s the hag-cry that the women raise be¬ 
fore they torture the prisoners,” returned the 
other. “They think they ’re sure of us as soon 
as the sun goes down.” 


266 THE INCA EMERALD 


Will returned just in time to catch the last 
words. 

“There’s no one in sight,” he said. 
“Could n’t we slip off ourselves down the 
cliff?” he went on. 

“Not a chance,” explained the scientist. 
“They’d roll boulders down on us.” 

“Is there any way of holding them off 
after dark?” went on Will, after a little pause 
*—and had his answer in the pitying silence of 
the two older men. 

For a moment he turned very white. Then 
he set his teeth and threw back his shoulders. 

“I’m only a kid,” he said, “but I’ve been 
in tight places before. You need n’t be afraid 
to talk plain.” 

“If they get over when it’s too dark to shoot 
straight,” said Jud at last, “we ’re all in.” 

Will looked at him unflinchingly. 

“Watch the stairs,” he said suddenly. 
“I’ve an idea.” And the boy hurried back to 
the little parapet that overhung the trail that 
ran a thousand feet below. 

Beyond and above him, the rim of the set¬ 
ting sun was coming nearer and nearer to the 


THE LOST CITY 267 

snow-capped mountains that cut the sky-line 
of the west. Already their white crests were 
gleaming crimson in the dimming light. As 
he went, Will fumbled in his belt and pulled 
out a tiny round pocket-mirror, which, with 
a tooth-brush, a comb, and a few other 
light articles, he had carried all through 
the trip in a rubber pocket fastened to his 
belt. 

During these happenings, miles away, con¬ 
cealed by the intervening range, Hen and Joe 
were riding at the head of a troop of hard¬ 
bitten, hard-faced vaqueros, the cow-boys of 
the South, whom they had met at the end of 
their first day’s journey. Armed with 
Mauser rifles, and with revolvers and knives 
in their belts, these riders of the pampas 
backed their wiry little South American 
horses with the same ease which their brethren 
of the Northern prairies showed. 

The leader of the troop had turned out 
to be an old friend of Professor Ditson, who 
had been with him on an expedition years 
before. He readily agreed to journey with 
Joe and Hen over the mountains to the Lost 


268 THE INCA EMERALD 


City. The men had been rounding up half 
a dozen hardy, tiny burros, those diminutive 
donkeys which can carry their own weight 
of freight all day long up and down steep 
mountain trails. It was decided to take these 
along for the use of the travelers. With the 
obstinacy of their breed, however, there was 
never a time throughout the day when one 
or more and sometimes all of the burros were 
not balking at this long trip away from the 
ranch where food and rest were awaiting 
them. Accordingly, it was late in the after¬ 
noon when the party reached the range be¬ 
hind which was hidden Machu Pichu. 

Suddenly Joe, who with Hen, mounted on 
spare horses, was piloting the little troop, 
caught sight of a flicker of light across the 
crest of the highest peak of the range ahead 
of them. At first he thought that it came from 
the rays of the setting sun reflected from a bit 
of polished quartz. Suddenly he noticed, 
with a sudden plunge of his heart, that the 
light was flickering in spaced, irregular in¬ 
tervals. With Will and several of the other 
boys of his patrol, Joe had won a merit badge 


THE LOST CITY 269 

for signaling in his Boy Scout troop, and his 
tenacious Indian mind had learned forever the 
Morse code. As he watched now he saw the 
sun-rays flash the fatal SOS. Again and 
again came the same flashes, carrying the same 
silent appeal, which he knew could come from 
none other than Will behind the range, helio¬ 
graphing with the last of the sun to the chum 
who had stood back of him in many a des¬ 
perate pinch. 

As Joe glanced at the setting sun he real¬ 
ized how short a time was left in which to 
save his friends. With an inarticulate cry, he 
turned to Hen, who was jogging lazily beside 
him, and in a few quick words told him what 
he had read in the sky. With a shout Hen 
gave the alarm to the troop behind in the roll¬ 
ing Spanish of the pampas, and in an instant, 
hobbling the burros, every man was spurring 
his horse desperately up the steep trail. With 
the very last rays of the disappearing sun the 
message changed, and the Indian boy sobbed 
in his throat as he read the words. 

“Good-by, dear old Joe,” flickered in the 
sky. 


270 THE INCA EMERALD 

As the golden rim of the sun rolled beneath 
the horizon, Will strained his eyes desper¬ 
ately, hoping against hope to see a rescue-party 
appear against the trail which showed like a 
white thread against the mountain-side. Sud¬ 
denly, in the dimming light, he saw a few 
black dots moving against the crest of the op¬ 
posite mountain. They increased in number, 
and, once over the ridge, grew larger and 
larger until Will could plainly make out a 
far-away troop of riders and glimpse the rush 
of straining horses and the stress and hurry 
of grim-faced men. With a shout he leaned 
far out over the parapet until in the distance 
the drumming beat of galloping hoofs sounded 
loud and louder. 

Ten minutes later a long line of men with 
rifles in their hands were hurrying up the 
steep path that led to Sacsahuaman. 

The besieged were not the only ones who 
knew of their coming. Outside of the walls 
of the fort, the Miranha band had understood 
Will’s shout when he first saw the distant 
horsemen. They too had heard the hoof- 
beats, which sounded louder and nearer every 


THE LOST CITY 


271 

minute, and, although the path up the preci¬ 
pice could be seen only from the fort, yet from 
without the besiegers could hear the clink of 
steel against the rocks and the murmur of 
the voices of the climbing men. Just before 
the rescue-party reached the fort, Jud’s quick 
ear caught the sound of muttered commands, 
the quick patter of feet, and through a loop¬ 
hole he saw a black band hurrying toward 
the other entrance to the city, carrying with 
them the bodies of their dead and wounded 
comrades. 

Even as he looked there was a shout, and 
into the little fortress burst the rescue-party, 
headed by Hen, and Joe. In another minute 
they swarmed through the streets of the city; 
but the enemy was gone. At the foot of the 
other path the last of them were even then 
slipping into the darkening valley. 

Of all the band, alive or dead, one only 
had been left behind. Just outside the thick 
wall of the fort lay a huge motionless form. 
As Jud and Professor Ditson approached it 
they recognized Scar Dawson, deserted by 
the men whom he had so recently led. As 


272 THE INCA EMERALD 

they came close they saw that he lay helpless. 
Only his staring eyes were fixed upon them 
with an expression of awful appeal; yet there 
seemed to be no wound any where on his great 
body. As they bent over him, Pinto pointed 
silently to a tiny red spot showing at the front 
of the outlaw’s right shoulder—the mark made 
by one of the Indian’s fatal little arrows. 
Jud stared sternly down at the helpless man. 

“You’ve only got what was cornin’ to you,” 
he said. “You’d have tortured every one of 
us to death if you could,” he went on but 
there was an uncertain note in his voice. 
“He’s a bad actor if ever there was one,” he 
blustered, turning to the others. “Still, 
though, I’d hate to see any man die without 
tryin’ to help him,” he finished weakly. 

“He deserves death if any man ever did,” 
said Professor Ditson grimly; “yet it does not 
seem right to let a man die without help.” 

“Yes,” chimed in Will, looking down at the 
dying man pityingly; “do save him if you 
can.” 

The professor hesitated. 

“Well,” he said at last, “I can and I 


THE LOST CITY 


273 


will; but I am not at all sure that I ought.” 

Beckoning to one of the vaqueros, he took 
from his pouch a handful of the brown salt 
that is part of the equipment of every South 
[American cattle-man. Reaching down, he 
forced open the stiffening jaws of the outlaw 
and pressed between them a mass of salt 
until Dawson’s mouth was completely filled 
with it. 

“Swallow that as fast as you can,” he com¬ 
manded. 

Even as he spoke, the muscles of the man’s 
great body relaxed as little by little the anti¬ 
dote for the urari poison began to work. 
Fifteen minutes later, tottering and white, but 
out of danger, the outlaw stood before them. 

“I have saved your life,” said Professor Dit- 
son, “and I hope that you will make some bet¬ 
ter use of it than you have done. Your friends 
went down that way,” he continued precisely, 
pointing to the path along which the Indians 
had retreated. “I would suggest that you 
follow them.” 

The outlaw stared scowlingly for a moment 
at the ring of armed men who stood -around 


274 THE INCA EMERALD 

him. Then he turned to Professor Ditson. 

“For saving my life I ’ll give you a tip 
which may save yours,” he said thickly. 
“Don’t treasure-hunt in Eldorado— it’s 
guarded!” Without another word he disap¬ 
peared down the steep trail. 

“I hope I have n’t made a mistake,” mur¬ 
mured Professor Ditson to himself, as he 
watched Scar Dawson disappear in the dis¬ 
tance. 


CHAPTER XII 


ELDORADO 

A DAY and a night on burro-back 
brought the treasure-seekers through 
the mountains to Yuca, the loveliest 
valley in the world, where nine thousand feet 
above the sea it is always spring. There, 
half a thousand years ago, the Incas built 
their country houses, as of old the kings of 
Israel built in the mountain-valley of Jez- 
reel, and among the ruins of stone buildings, 
beautiful as Ahab’s house of ivory, several 
hundred whites and half-breed Indians had 
made their homes. In Yuca Professor Dit- 
son found many old friends and acquaint¬ 
ances, and the party rested there for a week 
and, thanks to Jim Donegan’s generous letter 
of credit, which had survived the shipwreck, 
thoroughly equipped themselves for the last 
lap of the dash to Eldorado. 

One morning, before the dawn of what felt 

275 


276 THE INCA EMERALD 

like a mid-May day, the expedition headed 
back along the trail, mounted on mules the best 
and surest-footed animals for mountain work. 
In order to prevent any unwelcome followers, 
the professor allowed it to be supposed that 
they were going back for a further explor¬ 
ation of the sacred city of Machu Pichu. 
When at last they were clear of the valley, 
with no one in sight, he called a halt, and 
carefully consulted his map at a point where 
the trail led in and out among slopes and hil¬ 
locks of wind-driven sand. 

“Here is where we turn off,” he said finally. 

Jud suddenly produced two large, supple 
ox-hides which he had carried rolled up back 
of his saddle. 

“So long as we ’re goin’ treasure-huntin’,” 
he remarked “an’ Scar Dawson is still above 
ground, I calculate to tangle our trail before 
we start.” 

Under his direction, the whole party rode 
on for a mile farther, and then doubled back 
and turned off at right angles from the trail, 
Jud spreading rawhides for each mule to step 
on. Their progress was slow, but at the end 


ELDORADO 


2 77 


of half a mile they were out of sight of the 
original trail and had left no tracks behind 
except hollows in the sand, which the wind 
through the day would cover and level. 

For the next three days Professor Ditson 
guided them by the map among a tangle of 
wild mountains and through canons so deep 
that they were dark at midday. At night 
their camp-fire showed at times like a beacon 
on the top of unvisited peaks, and again like 
a lantern in the depths of a well, as they 
camped at the bottom of some gorge. Here 
and there they came upon traces of an old trail 
half-effaced by the centuries which had passed 
since it had been used in the far-away days 
when the Incas and their followers would 
journey once a year to the sacred lake with 
their annual offerings. Even although Pro¬ 
fessor Ditson had been to Eldorado before, 
yet he found it necessary continually to refer 
to the map, so concealed and winding was the 
way. 

On the third day they reached a wide pla¬ 
teau which ranged just above the tropical 
jungles of the eastern lowlands. At first they 


278 THE INCA EMERALD 

crossed bare, burned slopes of rock, with here 
and there patches of scanty vegetation; but 
as they came to the lower levels they found 
themselves in a forest of vast cacti which 
seemed to stretch away for an immeasurable 
distance. Some of the larger specimens tow¬ 
ered like immense candelabras sixty and sev¬ 
enty feet high, and there were' clumps of 
prickly-pears as big as barrels and covered 
with long, dark-red fruit which tasted like 
pomegranates. Underfoot were trailing va¬ 
rieties which hugged the earth and through 
which the mules had to pick their way war¬ 
ily because of the fierce spines with which 
they were covered. Some of the club-cacti 
were covered with downy, round, red fruit 
fully two inches in diameter, luscious, sweet 
and tasting much like huge strawberries. 
Jud, who firmly believed that eating was one 
of the most important duties and pleasures 
of life, nearly foundered before they reached 
the pampas beyond the thorny forest. There 
they had another adventure in South Amer¬ 
ican foods. As they were crossing a stretch 
of level plain, suddenly a grotesque long- 


ELDORADO 


279 

legged bird started up from the tangled grass 
and, with long bare neck stretched out hori¬ 
zontally and outspread wings, charged 
the little troop, hissing like a goose as he 
came. 

“Don’t shoot!” called out Professor Ditson 
to the startled Jud, who was the nearest one 
to the charging bird. “It’s only a rhea, the 
South American ostrich. He ’ll run in a 
minute.” 

Sure enough, the old cock rhea, finding that 
he could not frighten away the intruders by 
his tactics, suddenly turned and shot away 
across the level plain, his powerful legs work¬ 
ing like piston-rods and carryirfg him toward 
the horizon at a rate of speed that few horses 
could have equaled. In the deep grass they 
found the nest, a wide circular depression 
containing thirty great cream-colored eggs, 
the contents of each one being equal to about 
a dozen hen’s eggs. The Professor explained 
that the female rheas of each flock take turns 
laying eggs in the nest, which, as a fair divi¬ 
sion of labor, the cock bird broods and 
guards. After incubation starts the shell 


28 o THE INCA EMERALD 


turns a pale ashy gray. The party levied on 
the rhea’s treasure-horde to the extent of a 
dozen glossy, thick-shelled eggs, and for two 
days thereafter they had them boiled, fried, 
roasted, and made into omlets, until Jud de¬ 
clared that he would be ashamed ever to look 
a rhea in the face again. 

At last, about noon of the fifth day after 
leaving Yuca, the trail seemed to end in a 
great wall of rock high up among the moun¬ 
tains. When they reached the face of this 
cliff it appeared again, zigzagging up a great 
precipice, and so narrow that the party had to 
ride in single file. On one side of the path 
the mountain dropped off into a chasm so 
deep that the great trees which grew along its 
floor seemed as small as ferns. Finally the 
trail ended in a long, dark tunnel, larger and 
higher than the one through which they had 
passed on the way to Yuca. For nearly a 
hundred feet they rode through its echoing 
depths, and came out on the shore of an inky 
little lake not a quarter of a mile across, and so 
hidden in the very heart of the mountain that 
it was a mystery how any one had ever dis- 


ELDORADO 


281 


covered it. Although it sloped off sharply 
from its bare white beach, Professor Ditson 
told them that it was only about twenty feet 
deep in the center. A cloud of steam drift¬ 
ing lazily from the opposite shore betokened 
the presence of a boiling spring, and the 
water, in spite of the latitude, was as warm as 
the sun-heated surface of the Amazon itself. 

Leading the way, Professor Ditson showed 
them, hidden around a bend, a raft which he 
and his party had built on their earlier visit, 
from logs hauled up from the lower slopes 
with infinite pains. Apparently no one had 
visited the lost lake since he had been there, 
and a few minutes later the whole party were 
paddling their way to the center of Eldo¬ 
rado, where lay hidden the untold wealth of 
centuries of offerings. 

“If I could have dived myself, or if any 
of the Indians who were with me could have 
done so,” remarked the professor regretfully, 
“we need not have wasted a year’s time.” 

“Well,” returned Jud, already much ex¬ 
cited over the prospect of hidden treasure, “I 
used to do over forty feet in my twenties, when 


282 THE INCA EMERALD 


I was pearl-divin’, an’ now, though I’m get- 
tin’ toward fifty, I certainly ought to be able 
to get down twenty feet.” 

“Fifty!” exclaimed Will. 

“Fifty!” echoed Joe. 

“Fifty!” chimed in Professor Ditson. 

“That’s what I said,” returned Jud, look¬ 
ing defiantly at his grinning friends, “fifty or 
thereabouts. I ’ll show you,” he went on 
grimly, stripping off his clothes as they 
reached the very center of the little lake, and 
poising his lean, wiry body on the edge of the 
raft. Suddenly he turned to Professor Dit¬ 
son. “There ain’t nothin’ hostile livin’ here 
in this lake, is there?” he questioned. 

“I don’t think so,” returned the professor, 
reassuringly. “Piranhas are never found at 
this height, and we saw no traces of any 
other dangerous fish or reptiles when we were 
here last year.” 

“Here goes then, for a fortune!” exclaimed 
Jud, throwing his hands over his head and 
leaping high into the air with a beautiful 
jack-knife dive. His slim body shot down 
out of sight in the dim, tepid water. 


ELDORADO 


283 

The seconds went by, with no sign of him, 
until he had been under fully three minutes. 
Just as they all began to be alarmed for his 
safety, his gray head suddenly shot two feet 
out of the water near where he had gone down. 
Puffing like a porpoise, with a few quick 
strokes he reached the edge of the raft and 
tossed on its surface something which clinked 
as it struck the logs. 

There, gleaming in the sunlight, was a bird 
of solid gold, which looked like a crow, with 
outspread wings, and which was set thickly 
with rough emeralds as large as an ordinary 
marble. 

With a cheer, Joe and Will gripped Jud’s 
shoulders and pulled him over the side of the 
raft, where he lay panting in the sunlight, 
while the treasure was passed from hand to 
hand. 

It was nearly a foot long, and so heavy that 
it must have handicapped the old man consid¬ 
erably in his dash for the surface. 

“Pretty good for a start,” puffed Jud hap¬ 
pily, as he too examined the gleaming bird. 
“Unless I miss my guess,” he went on earn- 


284 THE INCA EMERALD 

estly, “the great emerald that old Jim has got 
his heart set on is down there, too. The bot¬ 
tom is pretty well silted over, but I scrabbled 
through the mud with my hands, an’ when I 
struck this I figured out that I had just enough 
breath left to reach the top; but just as I was 
leavin’, my fingers touched somethin’ oval an’ 
big as a hen’s egg. It was pretty deep in the 
mud, and I didn’t dare wait another second, 
but I’m sure I can bring it up next time.” 

For half an hour Jud rested while Professor 
Ditson told them treasure-stories which he 
had heard in his wanderings among the In¬ 
dian tribes or remembered from his studies of 
Spanish archives. He told them the story of 
the galleon Santa Maria, which was sunk of! 
the Fortune Islands, loaded down with a great 
altar of solid gold incrusted with precious 
stones; and of the buccaneer Sir Henry Mor¬ 
gan, who sacked Panama and burned and sank 
in the harbor what he thought were empty 
vessels, but which held millions of dollars in 
gold and jewels in double bulkheads and false 
bottoms, and which lie to this day in the mud 
of Panama harbor. Then, there was the 


ELDORADO 


285 

story of the two great treasure-chests which 
Drake of Devon captured from the great gal¬ 
leon Cacafuego. As they were being trans¬ 
shipped into Drake’s vessel, the Golden Hind, 
both of the chests broke loose and sank off 
Cano Island on the coast of Costa Rica. Still 
at the bottom of that tiny harbor, thousands 
of pounds of gold bars and nuggets and a 
treasure of pearls and emeralds and diamonds 
lie waiting for some diver to recover them. 
Then Professor Ditson launched into the story 
of Pizarro’s pilot, who, when the temple of 
Pachacainac, twenty miles from Lima, was 
looted, asked as his share of the spoils only the 
nails that fastened the silver plates which 
lined the walls of the temple. Pizarro 
granted him what he thought was a trifling re¬ 
quest, and the pilot received for his share 
over two thousand pounds of solid silver. 

“That’s enough,” said Jud, starting to his 
feet. “Here goes for the biggest treasure of 
all.” 

Down and down through the dim water he 
dived straight and true. Hardly had he dis¬ 
appeared from sight before great air-bubbles 


286 THE INCA EMERALD 


came up and broke on the surface, and a few 
seconds later wavering up from the depths 
came what seemed to be his lifeless body with 
staring, horrified eyes and open mouth. 

As his white face showed above the surface, 
Will and Joe leaped in together, and in an in¬ 
stant had him out and on the raft again. In 
another minute the two boys were making 
good use of their knowledge of first aid, which 
they had learned as Boy Scouts. Working as 
they had never worked for merit badges, they 
laid Jud on the raft face down, with his arms 
above his head and his face turned a little to 
one side. Then, while Joe pulled his tongue 
out, Will, kneeling astride his body, pressed 
his open hands into the spaces on either side 
of his ribs. Then, alternately pressing and 
relaxing his weight as the water ran out of 
Jud’s mouth and nose, Will began the arti¬ 
ficial breathing at the rate of fifteen times a 
minute, while Joe rubbed with all his might 
the old trapper’s legs and body toward the 
heart. At the end of a couple of minutes of 
this strenuous treatment Jud gave a gasp and 


ELDORADO 287 

at last opened his eyes. Half an hour later 
he was able to tell what had happened. 

“I did n’t get more than half-way down,” he 
said weakly, “when a great greenish-yellow 
eel, five feet long an’ big as my arm, came 
gliding toward me. I tried to pass it but 
in a second I felt its cold, clammy body pres- 
sin’ against mine. Then came a flash, an’ 
somethin’ broke in my head, an’ the next thing 
I knew I was up here with you chaps workin’ 
over me.” 

Professor Ditson brought his hands to¬ 
gether with a loud clap. 

“That is what Dawson meant by saying the 
lake was guarded,” he said. “What attacked 
Jud here was a gymnotus.” 

“A Jim-what?” queried Jud. 

“An electric eel,” explained the Professor. 
“The old priests must have brought them up 
from the lowlands, and they have thrived here 
in this warm water ever since. It carries an 
electric battery in the back of its head, and a 
big one can give a shock which will stun a 
strong man. Wait a moment,” he went on, 


288 THE INCA EMERALD 


“and I ’ll show you every electric eel within 
a radius of fifty yards.” 

As he spoke he fumbled in his knapsack and 
pulled out a cylinder two feet long, wrapped 
in waxed paper, with a curious little clock¬ 
work attachment at one end. 

“I brought along two or three sticks of dy¬ 
namite equipped with detonators,” explained 
the professor. “They are really small depth- 
bombs. I thought,” he went on, “that if the 
mud were too deep at the bottom of the lake, 
a stick or so of dynamite exploded there might 
stir things up. I ’ll set this one to go off half¬ 
way down, and the shock will stun every liv¬ 
ing thing in the water for a couple of hundred 
feet around.” 

Winding and setting the automatic mech¬ 
anism so as to explode the bomb at a ten foot 
depth, the scientist carefully threw one into 
the water some distance from the raft. Two 
seconds later there was a dull, heavy plop, 
and the water shouldered itself up in a great 
wave which nearly swamped the raft. As it 
went down, scores of fish of different kinds 
floated stunned on the surface. Among them 


ELDORADO 


289 

were a dozen great green-gold electric eels. 
As they floated by, Hen slashed each one in 
two with his machete. 

As he finished the last one, Will began to 
strip off his clothes. 

“I can dive twenty feet,” he said, “and I’m 
going to have the next chance at the Inca 
Emerald.” 

“No,” objected Professor Ditson, “Let Hen 
try it. He’s a great swimmer.” 

Jud also protested weakly that he wanted 
to go down again; but Will cut short all 
further argument by diving deep into the 
center of the still heaving circle of widen¬ 
ing ripples in front of the raft. Even as 
he did so, Hen, who had stood up to take 
his place, gave a cry of warning; but it was 
too late to reach the boy’s ears, already deep 
under the water. Just beyond the circle of 
the ripples drifted what seemed to be the 
end of a floating snag; yet the quick eyes 
of the negro had caught the glint of a pair 
of green, catlike eyes showing below the tip 
of a pointed snout which looked like a bit of 
driftwood. 


290 THE INCA EMERALD 

“It’s a big ’gator,” he murmured to Profes¬ 
sor Ditson, who stood beside him. 

The latter took one look at the great pointed 
head and olive-colored body, now showing 
plainly m the water. 

“It’s worse than that,” he whispered, as if 
afraid of attracting the saurian’s attention. 
“It’s an American crocodile. The explo¬ 
sion and the sight of the dead fish have 
brought it over from the farther shore.” 

Without paying any attention to the raft or 
the men, the great crocodile suddenly sank 
through the water, so close to them that they 
could see its triangular head, with the large 
tooth showing on each side of its closed lower 
jaw, which is one of the features that distin¬ 
guishes a crocodile from an alligator. 
Even as they watched, wavering up through 
the smoky water came the white figure of the 
boy from the depths below, swimming strongly 
toward the surface, his right hand clasped 
tightly around some large object. Even as 
they glimpsed the ascending body, a gasp of 
horror went up from the little group on the 
raft. Before their very eyes, with a scythe- 


ELDORADO 


291 


like flirt of its long, flattened tail, the great 
reptile shot its fifteen-foot body down toward 
the swimming boy. 

Not until fairly overshadowed by the rush¬ 
ing bulk of the crocodile did Will realize his 
danger. Then he tried frantically to swerve 
out of the line of the rush of this terrible 
guardian of the treasure-horde. It was too 
late. Even as he swung away, the cruel jaws 
of the great saurian opened with a flash of 
curved keen teeth and closed with a death- 
grip on Will’s bare thigh. 

With a shout and a splash, the black form 
of the giant negro shot down into the water. 
Hen had learned to love the happy-hearted, 
unselfish boy, and, desperate at the sight of 
his danger, had gone to his rescue. No man 
nor any ten men can pull apart the closed jaws 
of a man-eating crocodile. The plated mail in 
which he is armored from head to tail can not 
be pierced by a knife-thrust and will even 
turn aside a bullet from any except the high¬ 
est powered rifles. Yet all the crocodilians— 
alligators, crocodiles, gavials, or caymans— 
have one vulnerable spot, and Hen, who had 


292 THE INCA EMERALD 

hunted alligators in Florida bayous, knew 
what this was. 

Swimming as the onlookers had never seen 
man swim before, the great negro shot toward 
the crocodile, which was hampered by the 
struggling boy, locked his strong legs around 
the reptile’s scaly body, and sank both of his 
powerful thumbs deep into the sockets of the 
crocodile’s eyes. The great saurian writhed 
horribly as he felt the rending pain. Inexora¬ 
bly the thumbs of his assailant gouged out the 
the soft tissues of the eye-sockets until the 
crocodile reluctantly loosed his grip and 
sought refuge from the unbearable pain by a 
rush into the deeps beyond the raft. As the 
great jaws opened, Hen unwound his legs 
from the armored body, and, catching Will in 
his mighty arms, shot up to the surface with 
him. 

In another moment the boy, slashed and 
torn, but conscious, was stretched on the raft 
beside Jud, while Joe and the professor bound 
up the gashes in his thigh, which, although 
bleeding profusely, were not deep enough to 
be dangerous. As the last knot of the hasty 



ELDORADO 


293 

bandages was tied, Will smiled weakly and 
opened his right hand. There, in the out¬ 
stretched palm, gleamed and coruscated the 
green glory of a great oval emerald, cut and 
polished by some skilful lapidarist perhaps 
a thousand years ago. Lost for centuries, the 
gem which had been worshiped by a great 
nation had once again come to the earth from 
which it had disappeared. 

Three weeks later, Professor Amandus Dit- 
son lay sleeping in a luxurious bedroom on the 
ground floor of the rambling house of a Span¬ 
ish friend whom he was visiting in the beauti¬ 
ful, historic, blood-stained city of Lima. In 
other rooms of the same house slept Will and 
Jud and Joe. Two days later the steamer 
would sail which was to take them all back 
north. Pinto was already on his way back to 
his wife and children at Para, and Hen was 
visiting friends of his own in the city and in¬ 
tended to join the party on the steamer. 

The silence of the night was broken ab¬ 
ruptly by a grating, creaking noise, and into 
the room of the sleeping scientist through the 
veranda window stepped a great masked fig- 


294 THE INCA EMERALD 

ure. As the electric lights were switched on, 
Professor Ditson awoke to find himself look¬ 
ing into the barrel of an automatic revolver. 

“Give me the treasure from Eldorado,” 
croaked a voice from behind the mask, “if you 
want to keep on livin’.” 

The scientist stared steadily at the speaker 
for a moment before he spoke. 

“If you will take off your mask, Dawson,” 
he said finally, “I am sure you will find it 
more comfortable. I was positive,” he went 
on, as the other obeyed and showed the scarred, 
scowling face of the outlaw, “that I made a 
mistake in sparing your life.” 

“I ’ll spare yours, too,” retorted Dawson, 
“unless you make me kill you. I’m goin’ to 
take the treasure an’ light out. It would be 
much safer for me to kill you, but I won’t un¬ 
less I have to—just to show you how grateful 
I am.” 

“I appreciate your consideration,” returned 
the scientist, quietly; “but you’re too late. 
The treasure is not here.” 

“I know better,” growled Dawson. “I’ve 
had you shadowed ever since you got here. 


ELDORADO 


295 

It’s locked in that leather bag, which never 
leaves your sight day or night, an’ I’m goin’ 
to take it right now.” 

Suiting his action to his words, and still 
keeping his revolver leveled at the professor, 
the outlaw pulled toward him a big cowskin 
bag, which, as he said truly, the scientist had 
kept with him night and day ever since he 
purchased it at a shop in Lima the morning 
of his arrival. 

“Dawson,” returned Professor Ditson, ear¬ 
nestly. “I give you my word as a gentleman 
that the treasure is now in the safe on the 
steamer which leaves the day after to-morrow, 
and I hold the receipt of the steamship com¬ 
pany for it. Don’t open that bag. There is 
nothing in it for you but—death.” 

“I ’ll see about that,” muttered Scar Daw¬ 
son. “Don’t move,” he warned, as the scien¬ 
tist started up from his bed. “I ’ll shoot if 
you make me.” 

Even as he spoke, he drew a knife from his 
belt and slit the leather side of the bag its 
whole length with a quick slash, and started 
to thrust in his hand. 


296 THE INCA EMERALD 

As he did so he gave a yell of terror, for 
out from the opening suddenly appeared, wav¬ 
ering and hissing horribly, the ghastly head of 
the great bushmaster which the scientist had 
carried and cared for all the way from the 
Amazon basin. In another second, half its 
great length reared threateningly before the 
terrified outlaw. With one more yell, Dawson 
threw himself backward. There was a crash 
of broken glass, and by the time Will and Jud 
and Joe and their host, aroused by the noise, 
had reached the room, they found only Pro¬ 
fessor Ditson, coolly tying up the damaged 
bag, into which, by some means known only to 
himself, he had persuaded the bushmaster to 
return. 

To-day, in the world-famous gem collec¬ 
tion of Big Jim Donegan, in the place of 
honor, gleams and glows the great Emerald 
of the Incas. What he did for those who won 
the treasure for him, and how that same party 
of treasure-hunters traveled far to bring back 
to him that grim, beautiful, and historic stone 
of the Far East, the Red Diamond—well, 
that’s still another story. 

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